by Tom Deitz
Aikin, however, seemed disinclined to pursue any of those options. In fact, with or without sword and magic helmet, he was nowhere in sight.
“Prob’ly sneaked off,” David allowed eventually.
“Be just like him,” Liz agreed, easing her arm around him so that her hand rested on his hip, her fingers inside the waistband.
“He’s a big boy, though. He’s not been drinkin’ and he’s got his own wheels.”
“Acting funny, though.”
David scowled at her, wishing he was not so buzzed. “How so?”
A shrug. “I dunno. Just funny. Wired—distracted. Something like that.”
David shrugged in turn and returned his attention to the dance floor. The band had picked up their instruments again, after a very short break indeed, and was laying down a fine opening riff for what promised to be an amazingly fast number. He peered down at his half-finished Lowenbrau. “Think I’ll sit this ’un out,” he said. And surveyed the dancers again.
And well-nigh dropped his cup.
“Shit!” he hissed.
No one heard—apparently. But he also hoped no one saw the tall, dark-haired woman who had just melted from the mob on the opposite side of the darkened room. If she was wearing an actual costume, it didn’t register; though he got an impression of layers of gray, green, and black. And if that costume represented anyone from cartoons or comics, it mattered even less.
What he did notice was her face: white as a moon among stars, but in a way that suggested natural pallor; features as elegantly chiseled as a celebrity model’s; and waist-length black hair that flowed like spun night around her. Her brows were dark and arching, her eyes scarcely paler, and slanted exotically.
His eyes were burning like fire, and not from smoke or tears. For, incredible as it seemed, the woman was one of the Sidhe!
“Three’s the charm,” he muttered so softly no one heard. “Deer, enfield, and this. Something’s gotta be goin’ on.”
But what? Well, Faerie was evidently slopping out all over, for one thing; and traditional day for such occurrences notwithstanding, it seemed very unlikely that he’d hear not a peep from there for two years, then encounter the denizens of that place thrice in less than a week. In fact, this lady was a day early, if she wanted to observe true Samhain.
So what was she doing here? More to the point, was she doing anything besides enjoying herself? And was there anything more than coincidence to the fact that three of the dozen or so mortals in the country who could recognize what she was happened to be in this same room?
Or—troubling thought—were there more than a dozen? Did other mortals likewise know of Faerie? Like that John Devlin guy, maybe? He’d certainly seemed to know something! Unfortunately, Nuada, who was his principal contact among the Sidhe, had refused to tell, and he hadn’t thought to ask Fionchadd until the Faery youth was out of the loop and back home with his mom’s Powersmith kin across an impassable sea. But if something was stirring up traffic between the Worlds, how widespread was it? He knew of three recent incursions himself, but that didn’t mean there weren’t others. But was Faerie really leaking, or was that mere paranoia?
And what did he do about it?
If anything.
He didn’t need this, dammit! Juggling school and money and friendships and relationships and work-study and career plans was complex enough without Faerie muddying the waters. Never mind his simmering little vendetta against the Morrigu, that so far had amounted to no more than unfocused anger, but on which he was determined to make good.
Still, if he had a serious death wish, he supposed he could con a pocketknife off somebody (AWOL Aikin surely had one), and hold the lady at bay with cold iron until she gave him the straight scoop—assuming she still wore the substance of Faerie, which wasn’t necessarily the case; nor wise, given the amount of ferrous metal about.
But even he wasn’t fool enough to snatch someone off the dance floor in the middle of a crowded club. After this song… Well, he’d watch her carefully, then decide.
Besides, if he didn’t stop staring at her, his eyes were gonna burn right through his skull.
—At which point the woman spun around. And with the distraction of that too-beautiful face removed, he dragged his gaze away, feigning nonchalance with a sip of beer.
“Liz—” he began. But she was at the bar having her cup refilled. Alec was—apparently—still peeing.
And Aikin…?
He rose on tiptoes again. Still no Mighty Hunter. But as his gaze swept the crowd, he got a second jolt. Another one!
Another Faery woman had just squeezed through the entrance. She wasn’t as flash as the first one, granted, was clad in jeans and a tie-dyed T-shirt, in fact, and could almost have been an attractive Indian, Hawaiian, or Oriental. But there was no mistaking the burning in his eyes. The effect was not as strong as with the other woman, however: possibly a function of differing degrees of glamour, he supposed. Or—
“Shit!” he gasped; for someone had jostled the new arrival into one of the steel I beams that braced a wall. He held his breath, expecting a pained reaction—but there was none. Well, that settled one thing, then: the newcomer was definitely wearing the substance of the Mortal World; no way she could have endured that contact otherwise. Which perhaps explained why his eyes weren’t tingling as much—and also meant she would be less likely to do anything untoward, since changing to human clay reduced one’s capacity for magic.
But again, what did he do?
Watch, for the moment. Watch…and wait.
Fortunately, the second woman seemed as bent on dancing as the first. Not bothering to select a partner, she pranced straight onto the floor. And had not gone five paces—her slender body was already swaying with the beat—when she froze. Her head whipped around in David’s direction; her eyes narrowed dramatically. He first thought she’d spotted him, and tried to merge with the wall. But by following her line of sight, he realized that she was staring at her more exotically clad countrywoman. For almost five seconds she stood there, then puffed her cheeks, scowled like an irate spinster, spun on her heel—and marched straight back the way she had come. Before David could react, she had vanished through the outside door.
“Too bad,” a male voice sighed beside him. David started, having completely forgotten he was in a room full of people, many of whom were friends, and more at least vague acquaintances. After puzzling his way past a film of blue greasepaint, he recognized the jumpsuit-clad speaker as a guy named Mark, who’d lived next door in Milledge Hall the year before, and with whom he’d since shared a couple of anthropology classes. He was a security guard at the main library.
“Huh?” David mumbled, to cover.
“That girl who just left. Guess she didn’t like the crowd.”
“Or undercover smurfs,” David countered, trying to be witty and casual, though his heart clearly wasn’t in it.
A shrug. “Prob’ly not her style anyway.”
“You know her?”
Another shrug. “Seen her around the library some; mostly late at night, which is slightly odd for a woman. Had to run her out once.”
“Anything…special about her?”
“Like what?”
“Never mind.”
“So what’s the big deal, then?”
“Nothing, really. She just…reminds me of somebody.”
Mark grimaced thoughtfully. “Could be a grad student, if that helps. Maybe history, or something. Usually when I see her she’s reading history books.”
“So why isn’t the ’Watt her style?”
“I dunno. Maybe just ’cause she looks so serious and intense all the time. Preoccupied, you know. Not the partying type.”
David nodded curtly, tacitly rendering the conversation just one more sound bite. “Catch you later,” Mark grunted, and ambled away.
“Who was that?” Liz asked, over his shoulder, having just that moment returned. She handed him a cup of water and kept one for herself.
“Us
ed to live next to me in the dorm.”
“Think you oughta check on Mr. Dream?”
“I suppose,” David replied, and pushed through the crowd toward the men’s room.
He met Alec coming out as he was going in, and spun around to pace him. “Jesus Christ,” he snapped. “What were you doin’ in there? Transcribing Origin of Species in piss on the floor?”
Alec bared his teeth in a snarly grin. “It was A Brief History of Time, and I had to wait for the guy ahead of me to finish Paradise Lost. And we used the wall.”
Together they worked their way toward where Liz had managed to co-opt a table. “So why aren’t you guys—” Alec began. And broke off in mid-sentence. His hand shot out and grabbed David’s biceps so fiercely David skidded and almost toppled backward. Alec had frozen in his tracks. The grip tightened into genuine pain.
“Shit fire, McLean! What—?”
“It’s her!” Alec gasped softly, though David heard him even above the deafening rendition of “Wild Man” that was rattling the walls and setting the floor to quaking.
“Who…?” But David already knew.
Alec dipped his head toward the white-faced woman in gray, green, and black, the blatantly exotic Faery woman whose very presence had apparently prompted her fellow de Danaan to leave.
“Eva! It’s Eva!”
David squinted through a drift of cigarette smoke that further confounded the already uncertain light. “No way!”
“Well, it’s her goddamned sister then!”
“Did she have one?”
“I dunno.”
David clamped his free hand on Alec’s wrist—noting as he did that his friend was trembling. Alec’s grip on his arm was actually making his fingers go numb. “Cool it,” he hissed. “Eva’s dead. You saw her die!”
“And we both know the Sidhe don’t stay dead!”
“Yeah, but resurrection involves startin’ over from scratch, from the womb… It could take years.”
“Usually involves!” Alec corrected vehemently. “If they’re strong enough, their spirits can build new bodies almost instantly. It just hurts like hell.”
“Was Eva that strong?”
Alec was still staring at the woman, his eyes squeezed to tearful slits. “Maybe not,” he gritted.
—And wrenched free of David and fled.
*
“I’m sorry,” Alec choked two minutes later. “I really am sorry, guys, but I just can’t go back in there!”
Stripped to a black tank top, boots, and jeans, he was slumped on the knee-high brick rim of a planter in the building-sized minipark a block up the street from the ’Watt, with his head in his hands and his elbows on his knees. Dream’s wig was a blot of silver-shot blackness amid the dying flowers behind him. David and Liz flanked him, David with an arm across his shoulders.
“Don’t you think you’re kinda overreacting?” David murmured. “I mean, think about it, man. No way it could’ve been Eva. And you said yourself it didn’t really look like her.”
“No, but it reminded me of her like a kick in the guts can remind you there’s a half-ton animal attached to that horseshoe you just found. Or— Never mind,” he finished sloppily. “I’m not makin’ any sense.”
“You’ve just had a few too many,” David chuckled sympathetically. “’Course I have too…”
Alec slapped a hand on David’s knee, where it rested, heavy and unnerved. “If I go back, she’ll be in there, Dave. And that’ll remind me too much of…all that. And I just can’t deal with that!”
“So don’t look at her!” Liz snorted.
David scowled at her across Alec’s head, wondering why someone who was usually the soul of diplomacy had decided to play bitch-queen now. Of course, she hadn’t seen those two women, either. Maybe that was it: the fact that he hadn’t reported them instantly…
“I can’t help but look!” Alec protested.
“Okay,” David sighed. “No big deal.”
“It’s just too hard, man.”
“Have some water,” Liz offered guiltily, having brought her cup along. Alec took it and swallowed sloppily. He poured the remainder over his head. “Thanks,” he mumbled. “Hey, thanks to both you guys.”
David could only nod helplessly. Alec was right: seeing the woman again would do more harm than good; though the sooner he came to terms with his lost love, the better for all concerned. On the other hand, he’d all but decided to confront her himself, before this crisis had derailed him. Now, though—well, he frankly wasn’t sure he had the balls.
“Oh shit!” Alec gulped, slapping his hand over his mouth as he twisted around—and was violently sick into the planter. David held him until he stopped heaving, and used a corner of Dream’s cloak to wipe his face. Liz produced a second cup of water.
“You gonna be okay?” David asked seriously, as he steadied his roomie. “I mean, Jesus, what happened? It hit you all at once?”
“Guess so,” Alec mumbled. “But Dave?”
“Yeah.”
“Take me home.”
David hesitated the briefest instant. Then, “Sure. Like I said, it’s no big deal. We got what we came for—mostly.”
“You think he’ll be all right by himself?” Liz whispered.
—Not softly enough, evidently, for Alec stiffened. “You’re not stayin’ home?”
A longer hesitation, as David and Liz exchanged resigned glances. He’d hoped to find Aikin and have him nursemaid Alec while he spent the night at Liz’s. But maybe that wasn’t such a good idea—especially since Aik hadn’t resurfaced. And looking at Alec’s sudden pallor, his set jaw and wild, worried eyes, he knew that tonight friendship had to come first.
“Yeah,” he said gently, urging Alec to his feet. “I can do that. C’mon, man, let’s go.”
“I hate ’er,” Alec slurred, as he let himself be steered along. “I hate ’er ’cause I love ’er! And I gotta find out if she loves me.”
“Alec—”
“They’ve got ’er,” Alec interrupted. “I know they have. I know!”
“Sure,” David agreed. “Here, watch your step.”
Alec froze in place, and was therefore well-nigh immovable. “I’ve gotta find ’er, Dave,” he wailed. “I’ve got to!”
“Fine,” David told him, a little shortly. “So what d’ you say you start lookin’ at home?”
“Home…” Alec repeated dully.
“Yeah, man, home. You can start lookin’ tomorrow.”
“Home,” Alec said again. “Don’t let me be alone tonight, Dave.”
A deep, uncertain breath. “I won’t, man, I promise.” Then, above his nodding head: “Uh, Liz, can you help me here?”
“Home,” Alec mumbled, as his friends urged him along. “Home, home, home…”
“Home,” David echoed. “Yeah, right, let’s get you home.”
“Gotta find ’er!” Alec screamed at the stars. “Gotta find ’er!”
And Death could only glare at Dream and wish for dawn.
Chapter IX: On Track
(Athens, Georgia—Friday, October 30—night)
The last light on Milledge Avenue flicked from red to green and Aikin stomped the gas. The S-10’s tires chirped obligingly, but with rather less conviction and far harsher tones than a certain other something chirped—when it didn’t whistle or trill. He grinned in anticipation, and cranked the radio up loud. WUOG-FM had just replaced Michelle Malone’s “Has Anybody Seen My Monster?” (transparent homage to Halloween), with the Cranberries’ “Zombie”—which was more his speed.
And speed was of the essence, as midnight approached. Why it had to be then, he wasn’t sure, save that it was one of the “between” times, and, more to the point, the particular “between” time when he was least likely to be observed. Roomies tended to be about at dusk and dawn, and he had to play boy-student at noon. Last night’s witching hour had simply been too soon—he’d still been checking out the enfield then, never mind the study session already l
ocked in with Cammie, who was sufficiently insecure about whatever was evolving between the two of them to be tolerant of temporal caprice. But tonight, Whitehall Forest would for all intents be deserted. Tonight was Aikin’s own. Probably just as well, too—for even Mighty Hunters were skittish about certain things on genuine Halloween. Sighing, he shifted his hands on the wheel and relaxed into the backrest, noting absently how the scanty suburb past where Milledge Avenue ducked beneath the bypass to become Whitehall Road had lapsed into pastures under starlit skies. Actually, he corrected, there was mostly sky glow from Athens, the heart of which lay two miles back; but a few of the first magnitude sparklers were visible anyway—and, now he looked, a ghosting of clouds like the shadow of Alec’s Dream cloak. More prosaic by far were the barns and service buildings of the Agricultural Research Stations that claimed most of the open land to either side. Ahead lay woods—and research of another kind.
He wondered if they’d missed him yet: that trio of excellent friends he’d not so much abandoned as discreetly disengaged from back at the ’Watt. Hopefully they were still boogying till they dropped. Probably Dave (the sharpest) had discovered that he’d been dancing like a fiend one minute and was gone the next. Likely they’d be pissed, but eventually forgive him—again. Trouble was, while he loved music, the louder and live-er the better, he loathed crowds and the press of humanity, especially mobs as unrestrained as the 40 Watt crew had been. It was just too hard to hang on to your self, dammit; he could always feel his edges starting to blur, as though people had magnetic fields that tugged at his personality, and too many would fragment him utterly.
Perhaps that explained the attraction of Faerie: not so much the sheer wonder of the place (though Dave had observed that anyone as curious as Aikin was had to be part cat), as because that land was lightly populated (so Dave had also said), with many inhabitants of less-than-human size. Solitude should therefore be more accessible there. And with immortality to spend, there would never be any cause to hurry; so that a guy might actually have time to think and observe and learn and enjoy and…just be! Shoot, on the ride back down here from home Dave had recounted the tale of a Sidhe lord who’d planted an acorn and not moved from that spot while the tree grew, flourished, died, and withered away. And one of Dave’s Faery friends—Fionchadd was his name—had once coupled with a woman for a week and never lost his erection. Shape-changing had been involved too, from both participants, and at least one sex shift as well. (“Eternity Outlasts Prudery,” was a popular quote among the more pragmatic Sidhe.)
