They could see the kitchen from where they stood. The refrigerator door hung ajar. Milk and eggs were smeared across the counters and floor. Clouds of flour and spices and rolled oats had settled over everything. Frozen meat was unthawing in bloody puddles. Shattered plates and cups and saucers covered the floor. A sour, spoiled smell rolled through the apartment.
"The Host," Jacky said, tears swelling in her eyes as she took in the ruin. "That's who did this. The Unseelie Court."
"But what were they looking for?" Kate asked.
Jacky turned to her. "Me," she said in a small voice. "And … and when they didn't find me, they … they did this …."
The premonition of danger hadn't left Kate yet. "Let's get out of here," she said and gave Jacky's arm a tug.
Jacky shook off her hand and moved toward the bedroom. She was all empty inside. Not the empty she'd felt when Will walked out – the sense that she had nothing important in her life – but an emptiness more akin to the aftermath of rape. Her most private place, her home, had been ravaged. Violated.
She tried to summon up an anger, but everything just seemed too bleak. As if nothing mattered anymore. All that was necessary now was to discover the full scope of the damage. Had the plush toys that had been her friends since childhood been destroyed? Had they broken the clock that was the last Christmas present her grandmother had given her before she died? Was anything left in one piece?
"Jacky!" Kate called softly, starting across the room.
Jacky opened the door to the bedroom. She had one moment to take in what she saw. The frame of her bed was broken into countless pieces and heaped against one wall. The dresser lay on its side, drawers in a broken pile beside it. In the middle of the room a huge nest had been made out of her shredded mattress, her blankets and sheets, and her clothes. And rising from it, disturbed from their sleep and blinking slitted yellow eyes, were nightmares.
Their heads were wider than they were tall, and their skin was brown, creased like wrinkled leather. Straw-pale hair hung in greasy strands. They weren't much taller than Jacky, herself, but they were broad and squat, their heads disappearing into their torsos without the benefit of necks. Animal furs were tied about their waists, hanging to their knobby knees. Wide noses flared as they caught Jacky's scent … and Kate's ….
"Got her now, got her!" the foremost cried happily. His wide mouth split into a grin, revealing rows of pointed yellow teeth. "Got her, hot damn! Won't the Boss be grinning now?"
Bogans, Jacky thought.
She tried to evade the creature's grasp, but moved too late. A meaty fist closed on her arm, grip tightening until a moan escaped her lips. Her jacket fell from suddenly numbed fingers. The others were approaching. There were three of them altogether, but Jacky knew that one alone would be more than a match for her. But while they had her, they wouldn't get Kate.
"Run!" she cried. "Run, Kate!" With her free hand she snatched the redcap from her head and tossed it to her friend.
Kate caught the cap, but she didn't run. She saw the same ruin of the bedroom as Jacky, but instead of a bogan gripping her friend, all she saw was a smelly old wino, gap-toothed and unshaven, with bloodshot eyes, baggy trousers, and a white shirt so dirty it was a yellow-brown. She didn't even think of what she was doing as she shoved the cap into her belt and picked up the nearest thing that came to hand. It was the brass base of a small table lamp. Three quick steps and she was in the door, her makeshift weapon coming down on the shoulder of the wino that held Jacky.
The bogan howled and Jacky pulled free of his grip. She dropped to the floor, grabbed her jacket and scuttled between the other two bogans, while struggling to get an arm into the jacket sleeve. With the redcap gone, the bogans didn't look so clear anymore. She knew what they were, so she could still see their bogan shapes, but superimposed over them were the winos that Kate was seeing. Somehow they seemed more frightening because of that.
She got one arm in, wriggled the jacket around to get the other. She saw Kate whack the first bogan again, the base of the table lamp knocking the creature to the floor. The remaining pair had turned and were coming toward Jacky, but now she had her other arm in the jacket, pulled it on, and –
The two bogan/winos stopped in midstride as she disappeared. Jacky crept over to what was left of her bed and hefted a club-length piece of one of its legs. While the bogans stood there trying to spot her with their day-dimmed eyes, she ran up and hit the closest one as hard as she could on its knee.
The creature cried out and stumbled to the floor as its leg gave way under him. The other bogan glanced at his companion. Before it could move, Jacky and Kate both hit it at the same time. It fell across the one that Jacky had brought down, who was still clutching his knee. Jacky hit him with her club again and then all three creatures lay still.
Breathing heavily, the two friends looked at each other. The moment of action had cut something loose inside them. The shock of the ransacked apartment and the attack faded before the self-sufficient feeling that rose in them. Going to the Giants' Keep and rescuing the Laird's daughter … it didn't seem quite so impossible now.
"Are they … are they dead?" Jacky asked, breaking the silence.
Kate shook her head as she still tried to catch her breath. "I don't know. Jacky, what the hell are a bunch of winos doing in your apartment?"
"Winos?" But then Jacky realized that Kate was seeing them without the benefit of hob stitcheries. "Stick the cap on your head and see what they really are," she said.
Kate worked the cap free from her belt and put it on. The lamp base fell from her hand.
"Oh, jeez," she mumbled. "What are they?"
"Bogans," a voice said from the living room before Jacky could answer. "And that was well done indeed, though you're lucky it's day and not night, for you wouldn't have had such an easy time of it if they'd been completely awake."
Jacky and Kate turned, adrenaline pumping in a rush through their systems once more. Kate took a step back, but Jacky touched her arm.
"It's okay, Kate," she said. "This is Finn."
"At your service," the bearded hob replied with a small bow, "though you don't much seem to need it at the moment."
"What are you doing here?" Jacky asked.
"Following you. I chased after you all night, but couldn't find the right thread to lead me to you. Then the sun came up and I fell asleep. When I woke, my stitcheries told me that you'd passed right below me while I was snoozing. So I followed the new thread and it led me here, too late for the rescue that you didn't need, which is just as well, for I don't know if I would have been so quick to attack three bogans, even in the daylight."
He regarded each of them admiringly. "Oh, yes. It's good to know there's still a hero or two left in the world."
"This is my friend Kate Hazel," Jacky said before she remembered that she should have thought up a speaking name for Kate, rather than giving away her true one. Jacky didn't exactly distrust the little man, but with that touch of feral slyness in his eyes, she wasn't sure if she trusted him completely, either.
"Kate Hazel," Finn said. "Hazel – that's the Crackernut, you know. A wise tree, not so lucky as the Rowan, to be sure, but sometimes clever thinking will take you farther than ever luck could. It's more dependable, too. I'm pleased to meet you, Kate Crackernuts."
Kate looked at him, not really hearing what he was saying. She turned to Jacky.
"We have to get out of here, Jacky," she said.
Her gaze flickered to the bogans. The one she'd struck was definitely dead. Thick greenish-red blood was pooling around its head.
"I think I'm going to be sick," she added.
Finn nodded. "We'd best go quickly. Where there's a few bogans, there's likely more. No sense pressing our luck, even if we do have a Jack with us."
Jacky swallowed hard. She, too, couldn't look at the bogans for long without feeling queasy. But she felt no regret at what she and Kate had done.
"Let's go," she said.
Taking Kate's arm, she led the way out of the apartment. On the stairs going down, she took the redcap from Kate's head, thrust it into the pocket of her jacket, then removed the jacket once more and carried it in her free arm.
"I believed you," Kate was saying as she let Jacky lead her down the stairs. "I really did. I mean, there was the cap, and that biker last night who was there and then wasn't, depending on how you looked at him. But I thought it was … I don't know. Not real at the same time. Do you know what I mean?"
She paused at the bottom of the stairs and looked back up at the door to Jacky's apartment. Finn had closed it behind them.
"I guess I'm not making much sense, am I?" she said.
"Lots of sense," Jacky assured her.
"Not to me," Finn said, but Jacky glared at him so he shrugged and said no more.
Jacky opened the front door and stepped out onto the porch, tugging Kate along with her. Finn followed right on their heels. Joe Reaves looked up from his pots and plants, his eyes widening. Jacky had forgotten the way she looked, but she wasn't going back upstairs for new clothes now.
"What happened to you, Jacky?" Joe asked. "That is you, isn't it?"
"Oh, it's me all right."
"Going punk on us, are you? No wonder your party was so rowdy last night." He grinned, but his humour faltered when Jacky just looked at him. "Look, it's your hair …," he began.
"It's okay," Jacky said. "I've just going through a bit of a weird time and I'm kind of in a hurry, Joe."
"Hey. No problem. See ya around."
Jacky nodded and led her two companions off down the street, leaving her downstairs neighbour on the porch scratching his head. It was weird, she thought. She knew she should be scared, and she was, but not like she ought to be. It was more a cautious kind of scared that would keep her from getting too cocky. But those things back in the apartment …
"Are you going to be okay?" she asked Kate.
"Yeah. I think so. But, jeez. Talk about wimping out."
"You didn't wimp out, Kate. You saved the day." Jacky found a grin for her friend. "Just like the valiant tailor."
Kate came up with a small smile. "I'm sorry about your place, Jacky."
"Me, too. I think maybe we shouldn't wait the couple of days Bhruic told me to. We should take off now."
"What did the Gruagagh tell you?" Finn wanted to know.
"Oh, this and that. What will those bogans do when they find us gone and one of them dead, Finn?"
"They won't be so gentle with you next time," the hob replied. "None of the Host will."
"Great." Jacky glanced at Kate. "Are you up for Calabogie?"
Kate nodded, not quite trusting her voice. Jacky squeezed her arm.
"I know what you're feeling," she said.
"I'm still going," Kate told her.
"I know you are. And I love you for it."
Walking a couple of paces behind the pair, Finn shook his head. They were either brave or fools. What they had just undergone in Jacky's apartment could not begin to prepare them for what was waiting in the Giants' Keep. And yet, brave or foolish, they were going all the same. And he, knowing himself to be a fool, was going with them.
The Laird of Kinrowan's folk owed them that much and since he was the only one of the Lairdsfolk present, since he'd put the burr in Jacky's cap and set her on the road, it seemed only right and proper that he be the one to see it through and go with them. But oh, he wasn't happy about it. Not one bit.
Nine
You okay?" Kate asked.
Jacky nodded. Or at least as okay as could be expected, she thought, now that the immediate need to be brave and sure of herself had passed. When Kate had been falling apart back at the apartment, it had been easy to take on the leader's role. But now Kate was more herself, and it was Jacky wondering where she'd find the courage to go on. When she thought about those things in her apartment, the bogans …
"You and me," she said to Kate. "We're like a couple of yo-yos. First you're being strong for me, then I'm doing it for you, and now we're back to square one again. I just hope that we don't ever fall apart at the same time."
"There's always your friend Finn."
"I suppose."
The two of them were sitting in a window booth at Hitsman's, a restaurant on Bank Street that was just a couple of blocks south of Jacky's apartment. They were trying to come up with a plan of action. Finn was at the pastry counter deciding what he wanted to have with his tea. He looked like a small but ordinary man rather than the hob Jacky knew, but that was a part of the – what he called – glamour that he wore in the everyday world.
They had chosen the restaurant rather than Kate's apartment because it was more public and therefore, they hoped, safer. The Unseelie Court preferred to act in lonely places and at night, Finn had assured them.
"It's past noon now," Kate said. "Do you think we can get to Calabogie and do whatever we have to do before it gets dark?"
Jacky shook her head. "I've got a pretty good idea where the Keep is from Bhruic's map, but I don't know how long we'll be inside looking for the Horn. Actually, I don't even know how we'll get inside, or what we'll find there." She looked out the window and watched a couple of cars go by. "Actually," she added as she turned back to Kate, "it seems like a pretty crazy thing to be doing in the first place. I mean, it's not like we're really the heroes that Finn keeps talking us up to be."
"Maybe we should get a gang," Kate said. "We could call it 'The Gang' and –" She was looking out the window and broke off as Finn joined them, his plate loaded with a half-dozen pastries.
"You're going to get sick eating all of those," Jacky said.
"Finn," Kate said before he could reply to Jacky. "There's a guy standing there beside the Fresh Fruit Company – on the left, see him? He's been there for about ten minutes now, not doing anything except just hanging around."
"Where?" Jacky said, sticking her face close to the window to have a look.
The man met her gaze from across the street, a half-smile on his lips, then stepped back around the corner of the building and out of sight. Jacky was left with a vague impression of a tallish man in jeans and a jean jacket, clean shaven with tousled chestnut hair.
"Now you've done it," Kate said. "You've let him know we're on to him."
"It's not so bad," Finn said. "That was Arkan Garty, one of Crowdie Wort's foresters."
"Does that make him one of the good guys or one of the bad guys?" Jacky asked.
"Crowdie Wort owes his allegiance to the Laird."
"Then why is his forester watching us?"
"I …" Finn looked from Jacky to Kate, then shrugged. "I don't know. The air is thick with rumours. Foremost is the fact that you mean to rescue the Laird's daughter, so the Lairdsfolk can only wish you well. But they've heard that you've been to see the Gruagagh, so the more distrustful amongst the Seelie Court are suspicious that your rescue attempt is only a false story, and that your presence in the scheme of things spells yet another disaster for the Lairdsfolk."
"You're kidding, right?"
Finn regarded Kate seriously and shook his head. "With winter coming, the loss of the Laird's daughter is the worst thing that could have happened to us. Without her to sing the lockspells on Samhain Eve, we could all lose our lives that night."
"You're not making sense," Jacky said. "What are lockspells? What happens on Samhain Eve?"
"The dead walk. Not just the sluagh, but all the dead, and we have no power against them. They are jealous of our living, so on that one night we hide in places locked safe with spells that only the Laird's daughter knows."
"Well, she must have learned them from someone."
"She did. From her mother. But the Lady Fenella is gone and Lorana has no daughter yet to pass the knowledge on to. Without the lockspells we are easy prey for the dead. They wouldn't kill us all, but enough so that we could not survive the winter being tormented by the Unseelie Court.
"We were stronger once. We had
revels on Samhain: gathery-ups and all manner of fun. The Lady Fenella led us in the songs then and just the singing of them kept the dead at bay. But now … now we hide in safe places locked tight with spells and wait for the night to pass without a smile or a laugh passing our lips. For those that the dead catch on Samhain Eve – they become the sluagh of the Unseelie Court. There is no afterlife for them, and no borning again."
"Bhruic said Lorana was the green soul of Kinrowan and he was its heart," Jacky said. "Wouldn't he know the songs, too?"
"No one knows what the Gruagagh knows or doesn't," Finn replied, "except for maybe the Laird himself. But Deegan is none too happy with the Gruagagh for losing his daughter, and there's few in the Seelie Court that would trust the wizard enough to let him lead us in the songs."
"I like Bhruic," Jacky said.
"He can glamour anyone to like him."
"It wasn't magic – it was just, oh, I don't know. I just know he's not evil." She hoped.
"And I know that you're not evil," Finn said, "but there's still some that won't trust you for the simple reason that you've been the Gruagagh's guest."
"I'd like to meet this Gruagagh," Kate said before an actual argument broke out between Jacky and the hob. "Why don't we go see him now, on the way to my place?"
"We can't," Jacky said. "He said I shouldn't return."
"Well, could you at least show me his Tower?"
"It's just a house," Finn said, shaking his head. "And Learg Green's too dangerous for us now."
But Jacky, feeling obstinate, disagreed. "Oh, we can look at it," she said. "We can go to Kate's place by following the river. It won't be dangerous just to walk by," she added to Finn. "There'll be lots of people in the park jogging, playing ball, and walking their dogs and babies."
"And how many of them will belong to Gyre the Elder?"
"Who knows?" Jacky replied with a shrug. "But you said yourself that they wouldn't do anything when there's lots of people around." She eyed his plate of pastries. "So eat up and let's get going."
Jack the Giant-Killer (Jack of Kinrowan Book 1) Page 7
