by Emma Bull
“Oh, yeah? That usually means exactly the opposite.” She switched her glare to the phouka.
“It’s not mine to tell, sweet. But I don’t think you should stop asking.” And he grinned fiendishly at Willy.
“Well?” she said, when Willy glowered at her.
“We were talking about your resistance to glamour.”
She stared at him. “You’ve tried it on me?”
“Yes.”
“And failed?”
“Not entirely.”
Of course not. She’d thought him human, hadn’t she? But she had a dreadful, growing suspicion that he’d done more than disguise his appearance. “What did you do?” she asked, barely above a whisper.
He wore the haughty little smile that she was quickly coming to associate with the Sidhe. “I made you a little easier to deal with.”
“I told you once tonight, say what you mean.”
“When you objected to something I did or said, I blunted that objection. When you might have thought I was behaving strangely, I clouded your mind, and you accepted whatever I was doing.”
She felt grimy, and she didn’t think a shower would take care of it. “You made me fall in love with you.”
“I did not.”
“The hell you didn’t! You pretended to be a different kind of person entirely, and you forced me to believe it. The man I thought I was with when I was with you doesn’t exist! What do you think falling in love is?”
“What does that have to do with it?” Willy frowned.
He honestly didn’t know. Sadness took a little of the edge off her anger. “So,” she said heavily, “what was the problem? Everything you did seems to have worked.”
Willy ignored her distress—or perhaps he didn’t notice it. “It was damn difficult to keep it up. You didn’t stay pacified, and after a while I realized that though I could make the glamour work on you, it never worked as thoroughly as it should.” He looked thoughtful. “I’d love to know why.”
Eddi shook her head. He’d toyed with reality, bent her perceptions, and showed not the least guilt at the admission. She felt a lingering desire to punch his exquisite nose.
The phouka laughed softly, and Eddi and Willy both looked at him. “A lad so widely traveled as yourself, and you don’t know the answer to that?”
Willy’s expression was eloquent, even for Willy.
“A great pity,” said the phouka. “You’d do well to read Yeats. But I suppose you haven’t time, just now.”
“Are you going to say anything useful, or are you going to pat yourself on the back?” Willy snapped.
“Both. She has her own glamour, Willy lad. All poets do, all the bards and artists, all the musicians who truly take the music into their hearts. They all straddle the border of Faerie, and they see into both worlds. Not dependably into either, perhaps, but that uncertainty keeps them honest and at a distance.”
Eddi found all this uncomfortable to hear. It wasn’t that she was being described in the third person; more that someone else was being described, and called by her name.
“Does this sound familiar yet?” the phouka asked Willy, in his sweetest voice.
“Oh, I’d stop you if it did,” Willy muttered. “Trust me.”
“I am surrounded by people with no appreciation for history. Ah, well. In a time when we were stronger and more numerous, we sought out mortal men and women with that dual vision, kept company with them, and sometimes carried them away with us.”
“I know that” Willy said.
“We usually did badly by them, in the end.” The phouka glanced at Eddi then, and she saw regret or sorrow in his face. “But we cannot resist the lure of that mortal brilliance. It is its own kind of glamour, that dazzles the senses. And once we have found it, we cannot turn away.”
It was explanation and apology at once, and Eddi realized that it was meant mostly for her. She wanted to tell the phouka that it was all right, but Willy was there, and she couldn’t do it in front of him.
“So I can’t work magic on her because she already has magic of her own?” Willy was asking the phouka.
“For the sake of brevity, more or less.”
Willy squinted as if with a headache. “Oak and Ash. And you’ve . . . what she heard tonight. . . Oak and Ash.”
The phouka leaned back, cradling his coffee cup and smiling.
Willy looked up at him sharply. “Did you plan all this from the beginning?”
The phouka’s smile turned bitter. “All the parts of it that you’re asking about, yes.”
For a long moment, Willy gnawed his lower lip and glared. “And it’s all gone just the way you wanted, hasn’t it?”
The phouka’s only answer was a crack of harsh laughter.
“I could gag you,” Willy said.
“You wouldn’t . . . ah, yes, I suppose you would dare. Who would teach her, then?”
“No one,” Willy replied, soft-voiced and precise.
“All my work for naught?”
“If I knew what you were working toward, you might get a little sympathy out of me!”
“I work toward a victory for the Seelie Court.”
“Why do I think that’s only half an answer? Never mind. I’m too tired to go around in circles with you now.”
“Pity.” The phouka sighed. “I was just about to offer you first watch.”
Willy shrugged. “I can handle it.”
“Good. I very much doubt I could. Wake me at sunrise.” And he set his coffee cup on the trunk, stretched out on the couch with his back to the room, and appeared to fall instantly asleep.
“Lucky bastard,” Willy muttered.
Eddi got up from her chair. “Very interesting,” she said. “Teach me what?”
“I’d forgotten you were there,” Willy said.
“I thought you had. Answer the question.”
“Teach you—oh.” He laughed weakly. “No. If I answer you, you’ll have had your first lesson, and I won’t be responsible for that. But ask him when he wakes up. I’ve left him free to tell you. Try not to make me regret that, all right?”
Eddi unfolded the afghan from the back of the armchair and threw it over the phouka. He didn’t stir. “No promises,” she said. “If you want promises, I have to know what the hell you’re talking about. And you don’t want that, do you?” She headed for the bathroom door. “Practice tomorrow at 4:30. See you there.”
“Eddi.” His voice stopped her on the threshold. “About the band . . .”
“Yeah?” She held her breath.
The silence went on for long enough that she turned to look at him.
“Hedge,” he said, “is one of us.”
Us. It took an instant for her to understand. Then she stepped into the bathroom and closed the door behind her. What, after all, could she say to that?
chapter 13 – Do You Believe in Magic?
Her denim jacket was mended and clean. Eddi stood in the living room with the thing hanging from her fingers, and squinted at the phouka through a deluge of noon sun.
“It wasn’t me,” he told her.
“Well, it sure wasn’t me.”
The phouka leaned in the kitchen doorway. He was wearing navy chalk-stripe pleated trousers with cuffs, a pink band-collared shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and suspenders embroidered with—were they? Yes, they were. Palm trees.
“The Godfather meets Miami Vice,” Eddi muttered. “How’s your head?”
“Perfect, of course,” he said. He swept his hair back from his forehead to show her a short, pink scar.
She felt comforted. “It’s more than you deserve. Well, if neither of us did this”—she flourished her mended jacket—“who did? Willy?”
The phouka made a dismissing gesture with his coffee cup. “Once you’re fully awake, I trust you’ll recognize the folly inherent in that suggestion.”
“I wasn’t serious.”
“I also trust you’ll observe that it’s not just your jacket.”
Eddi looked around. The sun streamed uncommonly bright through the blinds. That held her attention for a moment. “The windows are clean,” she said at last, wondering.
“Very good. Don’t stop there, sweet.”
In fact, everything was clean. And the apartment smelled of fresh bread, which, she realized belatedly, was what had awakened her in the first place. “You made bread?”
“No.”
“Then what do I smell?”
“Bread.”
She pushed past him to look in the kitchen. There were two round brown loaves cooling on the counter. There was a pot of coffee made, as well. She drew back and looked him in the eye. “And you didn’t do any of this.”
“None, I’m ashamed to say.”
“So?”
He sucked in his cheeks and looked thoughtful. “If I were required to be forthright, which, thank earth and air, is rarely necessary, I would have to say that you’ve acquired a brownie.”
Eddi stared at him. “That’s silly,” she said after a bit.
“Possibly. But just in case, don’t offer up any thanks for all this. I don’t really enjoy washing dishes.”
Eddi paced the apartment, touching things. Perhaps she’d had so many intrusions into her life lately that she’d gone beyond resenting any more. Or perhaps the nature of this intrusion was different—its character was so clearly a smoothing of the waters of daily routine. Whoever had come and gone had left nothing in the way, nothing that wasn’t useful, nothing that Eddi had to rearrange her life around. The message of the clean apartment, the bread, the mended jacket, was, “The irritants are gone, the mundane details are taken care of. The important matters are left to you.”
She couldn’t say thank you. But she remembered how pleased the phouka had been at praise. “This is great,” she said softly. “The place never looked so good.”
Eddi stood at the window, not really seeing the rooftops and the waving trees of Loring Park. It was more than just clean windows and mending. She felt as if her future was back in her hands. She was not just baggage for the Seelie Court, an amulet that brought death but had no life of its own. She had allies, however uncertain. And she had knowledge, and would get more.
So she had her own glamour, did she? And Willy had found that alarming. He’d made a great fuss, also, over her unbedazzled state during the binding ceremony, and over the Queen of Faerie speaking English. . . . All pieces of the same puzzle. The clearest part of it was that she shouldn’t have understood the ceremony. The bread-and-blood of it tended to overshadow the words—what were they?
Mortal flesh, and doom, and something else, there were three things mortal. Spirit in flesh, spirit in doom—no, that was wrong, the other way around. And all of them under . . . will? Yes, that was the third mortal thing. It sounded like heavy metal lyrics, or imitation Aleister Crowley. Flesh, the body. Will, the mind. Doom? Mortality, fear of death? That made sense. It was, after all, what the Seelie Court wanted her for: to bring death to the battlefield.
Why had the Seelie Court supplied the mortal? Did the Unseelie Court not want their enemies dead? Or was it just the good guys’ turn to bring the party supplies? But that was a digression; one thing at a time.
Spirit—the soul? But then the whole thing became metaphysical, and hardly dangerous for her to know. Spirit, spirit . . .
“Magic,” the phouka said behind her, and she realized she’d spoken her last thought out loud.
“Spirit is magic?”
“Or more exactly, the power of Faerie. If, as I think you are, you’re quoting the Lady.”
Then Eddi remembered the context of the quote, and another puzzle piece came to her hand. This was the price of Eddi’s services as Angel of Death, this was the risk worth taking.
“Damn,” she said. “What were her exact words?”
The phouka watched her as he spoke, something eager in his expression. “ ‘Mortal flesh and mortal doom be one, and mortal will may rule them. Spirit shall reside in flesh, doom reside in spirit, and all shall bow before will.’ ”
“Impressive. Do you have the whole ceremony memorized?”
“No, my sweet. Just that crucial bit.” He was biting back a grin.
“I bet you could tell me what it means, too.”
“But it’s much more fun to watch you do it.”
“You jerk. Okay. Mortal flesh and doom are one—humans die, it’s part of the business of being human. What was the next bit?”
“ ‘ . . . And mortal will may rule them.’ ”
“Hmm. Mind over muscle, sure—but is that saying we control our own deaths?”
“Have you never heard of those who seem to lose their will to live?”
Eddi considered this. “I suppose. Now, spirit resides—”
“Shall reside.”
“Picky, picky.”
The phouka shook his head. “This, remember, was her warning to the assembled Court: Spirit shall reside in flesh, as a result of what we would do here.”
Eddi could feel her scalp begin to tingle. “Repeat the whole last half, that begins with ‘Spirit shall reside in flesh.’ ”
“ ‘Spirit shall reside in flesh, doom reside in spirit, and all shall bow before will.’ ” The phouka looked at her expectantly.
“My God,” she whispered. “She wasn’t lying—?”
“In the midst of a piece of ceremonial magic? No, my primrose. She was not lying.”
Eddi raked her hair off her forehead. “Then . . . I’ve got the power of Faerie, Faerie’s got my mortality, and if I want, I can control both of those?”
“Close,” the phouka said. “Faerie still has its power, and you are still mortal. But you have become, conditionally, part of Faerie, as symbolized by your acceptance of food from the Lady’s hand. Our power is thus yours by right, as it would not be had we taken you captive. You are not a captive—your answer to the Lady last night made that clear. Your answer also showed that you had not come as a willing sacrifice. You were there as an ally of Faerie, assuming the bonds as a formality.”
“Wait, wait, wait—which answer was this?”
“ ‘If the obligations of friendship are constraints, then I’m constrained to be here.’ ”
Good God—he memorized that? “But I didn’t mean friendship with Faerie. I meant. . .”
He gave her that grin, and that wicked look through his eyelashes. “You’re a poet, my sweet,” he said. “Surely you know that sometimes your words have more meaning to others than they do to you. And as for your ability to control what goes on . . . well. You have exactly as much control over magic as you do over your body, or your fate.”
“I haven’t had much control of that lately.”
“If you believe that, it’s true, and you have no magic,” the phouka said harshly. “And I have been as much a fool as Willy Silver claims I have.”
“Is that my fault? What do you think I—”
His voice overpowered hers. “But I don’t think you truly believe it. If you did, you would not have fought back when the redcaps threatened to overwhelm us. You would have curled up and let death ride over us all. I chose you in part because you were strong. I believed you would fight for your own life, if for nothing else. Now I believe you would fight for a great deal more.”
“If you think that not dying is just a matter of not wanting to,” Eddi sighed, “then boy, have you got a surprise coming.”
He wouldn’t smile. “Do you understand me, my heart? I offered you the key to magic, and you responded with denial. I cannot let that pass, even once. You must believe that what I have made possible is possible, or we have already failed.”
Eddi paced the living room rug. That she was a part of Faerie now—it was surprisingly easy to buy. She remembered the searing feeling of the Seelie Court’s power passing into her through every pore, and the scraps of knowledge that had come with it.
But the phouka was offering her magic, power of her own. Not possible, surely not. Yet
why would he want her to believe in the impossible? Was this a trick? Would he make a fool of her? No. He was entirely capable of making a fool of her, but not like this.
“Why me?” she said softly. He looked startled. “You told me I’d get all my questions answered on May first. And that’s always been Question Number One.”
“You heard what I told Willy. . . .”
“About musicians and glamour? Do you want me to believe that in a town full of musicians, I’m the only one who meets the specs?”
He shook his head.
“Was I the first one you found?”
“No. Do you know how many brilliant musicians are stupid, or crude, or determinedly ignorant, or in some way wholly despicable?”
“Sometimes I feel as if I’ve met every one of them,” Eddi replied. “But the Seelie Court doesn’t need someone lovable for this job. They don’t even really need an artistic type, do they?”
“No, though the chances are very good that we would have chosen one, simply because we like them. My primrose, before we go on, do you suppose I could at least have more coffee?” He held up his cup and looked pitiful.
“Pour me one, too.” He disappeared into the kitchen. She called after him, “And cut a couple of pieces of bread, for godsake!”
Eddi plunked down on the couch and tucked her feet under her. So many things to deal with. Explain all this to Carla, figure out what to do about Dan (what the devil had moved Carla to tell him?). Then there was Willy, and . . . Hedge? That Hedge was another denizen of Faerie made a certain cockeyed sense. It explained his determined air of the outsider, and all that new equipment. What local music store had found a little surprise in the cash register that time? Living with the hosts of Faerie, it appeared, was like running a home for incorrigible children.
The phouka balanced two cups of coffee and two pieces of bread and butter into the living room. He seated himself cross-legged on the floor, handed her her coffee, and looked expectantly up.
“Don’t give me that cocker-spaniel routine,” she scolded. “I want some answers, son.”
“Oh, but you have to ask me the questions first, love. It’s not in my nature to smooth the way for you.”
“I have one pending.”
