The Otherworld

by Mercedes Lackey

  Belinda leaned her head back and tried to relax enough to get it to stop throbbing. "I have no idea. I searched their rooms, their possessions, their car, their pockets—everything I could think of. I couldn't find anything incriminating." She sighed. "Whoever bought them kept the whole deal very well hidden—and they must have been offering a fortune. I just can't figure out why anyone would pay so much for such a ridiculous thing as a TK." She glanced at Mel through half-lidded eyes. "No offense intended."

  Mel's face twitched into a slimy smile. "None taken. I know why someone would offer a fortune—you haven't seen the private offers that come across the desk of anyone who might have access to, ah, commodities like Mac Lynn. Believe me, dear, he's worth more to you on the hoof than in the bag."

  "Pardon me for not giving a flying fuck." Belinda laughed. "I guarantee you he's worth more to me spread-eagled on a rock somewhere with a white-hot poker in his ass."

  "Tch-tch," Mel said, shaking his finger reprovingly at her. "Language like that is not becoming a lady."

  Belinda made a full-forearm gesture at him and ignored her boss' raised eyebrows. "I'll get you a TK. But I've gone through hell you wouldn't believe"—quite literally couldn't believe, she thought—"trying to get this one. You'll get the kid. And I'm going to take that creep out all by myself."

  Mel patted the gun that lay beside him. "We really must talk sometime about this habit you have of killing people who annoy you, Belinda dear."

  Belinda's laugh was short and harsh. "You should bloody talk."

  He chuckled. "Not at all. I would never think of killing someone just because he—or she—has annoyed me. For example, Belinda, you annoy me, but you are useful. I only kill those people who are dangerous to me or who are of no further use to me alive." He smiled gently. "I thought you had passed that line, dear. I truly did."

  A cold knot formed in Belinda's belly, and she repressed the shudder she didn't want Mel to see. "Friends again?" she asked with false cheerfulness.

  His smile was just as false. "Of course—now that I know you're still playing on my team. I make it a point to stay friends with the people on my team. Get me my kid tomorrow or the next day, and we'll even be best buddies."

  Belinda nodded, and winced as her hair moved with the nod. There were a lot of bruises under that hair. "I'll go out tomorrow. I already know how I'm going to get close. First, though, I've got to get some sleep, and then I'm going to the beauty parlor. I'm not going to be able to get anywhere near her looking like this. I'll have your kid for you in a day or two."

  "Fine." Mel's eyebrows furrowed, and he looked down at his shoes for a long, silent moment. "I think I might like to go along to pick her up," he said when he finally looked up. "I want to have a good look at my merchandise."

  Belinda sighed. "Hey, it's your party. Just so long as you still intend to pay me the full price, you are welcome to come along."

  Mel chuckled. "You mean you aren't inclined to give me a discount if I come along and help out?"

  She gave him a look of disdain. "You came along too late to earn a discount. Hell, I deserve a bonus just for pain and suffering incurred."

  "We'll see." Mel stood, and they watched each other warily. Then Mel slipped the gun into the holster hidden beneath his windbreaker, and keeping his eyes fixed on Belinda, he eased out of the room. "I'll be in touch. Or if you need me, call me at the Prince Charles. I'm listed as Mel Tenner," he said just before the door closed.

  Oooh, that's creative, Belinda thought. Nobody would ever connect Mel Tanbridge with Mel Tenner. Idiot. She listened to the click of the latch and held her breath until she heard Mel's measured tread moving away from her door. "Shit," she whispered.

  The room would be bugged, of course—Mel would have kept his options open, even if he had fully intended to kill her. "Do nothing irrevocable until the last possible moment," he'd told her more times than she cared to think about. "And always leave yourself an out—two, if you can." So he would have the room bugged, and he would now have someone keeping track of her movements.

  What else? Threatening her family? Maybe—and if he tried it, he would find out how little that meant. Her lush of a mother wouldn't even notice a bullet between the eyes, her bastard stepfather deserved one, and if Mel's goons could locate her real father, who had skipped before she was even born, she hoped they'd make his life exciting. Threatening her, then? If she screwed up, she was dead. But she already knew that. She was dangerous to Mel—she just had to make sure she kept herself useful. Well, as long as she was the only one who knew who—and where—the little girl TK-wonder was, she was useful. And after that, she'd get out of his reach. Fast.

  In the meantime, she hadn't seen the inside of her eyeballs in far too long. She double-locked the door, then stripped and eased herself between the cold sheets.

  Life was giving her real cause to consider another line of work.

  * * *

  Andrew Kendrick sat in the kitchen, staring out the window at the policemen who wandered around his property accomplishing precious little. He was satisfied that they wouldn't find anything incriminating in the barn. There was nothing—absolutely nothing—left. How that could be, he didn't know, but the fact that it seemed impossible didn't in the least change the fact that it was true. And with the worry of discovery of his questionable activities behind him, he could relax a bit. And since they hadn't found the person responsible for destroying his barn, he wished the police would just get the hell off his property.

  He would have to rebuild the barn. Rebuild the little windowless locking room, he thought. For the time being, the other barn would serve—but not as well. It had its private places, and its private times, but they were less frequent, and less convenient. Convenience had become important to him.

  He could see Amanda and Sharon playing Barbie dolls in the den, doing something that was not meant for adult eyes and whispering with their heads leaned close together. He watched them without making it obvious that he was doing so—something had just occurred to him as he sat there. Amanda was growing up.

  He sniffed with sudden distaste. Amanda had once been an enchanting child. She had been innocent and vulnerable and tractable. Now, as she sat next to the delicate and fragile Sharon, whose hair still tumbled loose in a five-year-old's baby ringlets, whose face was sweet and round and whose eyes were gentle and uncomprehending, Amanda was a gangling and ugly colt. She looked plain and scrawny, Andrew thought—and she looked hard. She had lost the childish innocence of Sharon. She seemed somehow adult, as she sat there making sly little comments while the two girls changed their dolls' clothes.

  His attention was suddenly riveted by something his older daughter did. Amanda's face and mood had changed, and her eyes glittered green in the dim light. She tied the Barbie doll's wrists behind her back and placed the Ken doll behind her in a pose suggestive of—

  Andrew's fingers tangled around the tablecloth in unconscious rage. He knew what Amanda was telling the little girl—he knew what she was showing her. Sharon was watching her older sister, fascinated, hanging intently on every word. Andrew couldn't hear the words hidden in the hushed whispers, but he knew anyway that she was exposing his secret—exposing him. And in the same burst of insight, he knew something else.

  He knew that he was going to have to get rid of Amanda.

  What she told to her little sister was of no real importance. Sharon wasn't old enough that any rational adult would take her seriously if she repeated what her sister said. Assuming she even understood half of what Amanda was telling her, or that she considered it anything other than a scary story. But Amanda could talk to adults as easily as she talked to the little girl. She could walk out the door and tell the police in his side yard what he had been doing—and what would come of that? Where would his law practice, with his high-powered corporate clients, be? Merryl would leave him, and worse, she would take Sharon with her—sweet, beautiful, obedient Sharon.

  It would only be a matter of time
until Amanda let something slip—he saw it coming with terrible clarity. He could see it in the crafty, loathsome eyes of the homely creature in the other room. He would have to get rid of her as soon as possible, in some way that would leave him completely above suspicion.

  With the police department's newfound interest in his home, that was going to be damned difficult.

  * * *

  Dierdre felt the Gate pull in behind her, felt it drain her of some of her energy as she bore the brunt of the snap for both herself and Felouen. Felouen was near death. She hovered there, suspended over the chasm of nonexistence by the finest of gossamer threads.

  Dierdre stood in the sacred grove of Elfhame Outremer, and felt the magic flow into her—magic she had cut herself off from voluntarily for a very long time. The great trees seemed to bend over her, welcoming her home, and their acceptance changed her subtly. She dropped her lighthearted human persona, her years of human acclimatization. She seemed to stretch, becoming something both more beautiful and more terrible than the human-seeming creature she had hidden herself in for all those many years. Her human colleagues, who had never seen the ancient elven noblewoman she truly was, would not have recognized her—and would have felt the strong compulsion to kneel and beg mercy in her presence for ever treating her with anything less than deepest respect.

  She knelt next to her wounded comrade and gently rested her hands on the torn and broken body. A soft, golden glow gathered around her; a faint sheen that grew in glittering bands until she became the pale, lovely center of a brilliant light warmer than any homecoming. Her lips trembled just a little as she sang, over and over:

  "Gathwaloür muelléiralra elearai ao;

  Elearai, pallaiebaroa, ailoaüé houe.

  Tué, atué escobeieada—

  Tué, atué,

  Tué, atué—tué."

  The song was ancient, one of the oldest magics of the elvenkind—so old that its language was far removed from that spoken by the Seleighe Court. To a people whose lives stretched thousands of years, and whose language had not changed in tens of thousands of years, this made it a tongue of unimaginable age and power. Singing it, she gifted her strength and her health to Felouen. And as she sang, pain spread through her body, and Felouen's wounds healed under her fingers.

  She kept singing until the pain blinded her and her voice faltered. She had no more strength to give—she could only take some of the damage to herself. Too much, and she would die in Felouen's place.

  As her voice fell silent, though, another voice picked up the song, and other hands rested on Felouen's body. The Grove had felt her need and had summoned help. She fell back and lay in the soft velvet grass, and the Grove fed her and comforted her and promised her renewal.

  She listened, unable to move, as the voices over Felouen changed; strong voices becoming weak, then being replaced by other strong voices, over and over. She felt like a child in her cradle again, rocked and safe, with others singing the old songs and whispering in the language of her childhood, the sounds familiar but the meaning of the words just out of the reach of her tired comprehension.

  Homesickness, long foreign to her, overwhelmed her as she lay in the eternal twilight in the hallowed place between the worlds. The elven-tongue, so beautiful and long neglected by her, sang through her veins like hot brandy. Dierdre felt tears welling in her eyes, felt the uprush of repressed longing for a place and a way of life she had voluntarily forgone.

  Homecoming—in such a way, with the death of one of her folk and the near-death of another riding her shoulders like a close-fitting cape—was bittersweet. The bitterness was only in the pain she brought with her from the low and dirty world of the humans, the unbearable sweetness in the touch of friends too long neglected, too long put aside.

  Felouen would live. Her people had come to the call of the Grove, and her wounds had been shared by them.

  And over Dierdre as well the elves began to sing, dispersing among themselves the agony that she had taken on alone when there was no one else to help her.

  At last she was able to sit again, to hold her head upright, to look around her. She saw Felouen moving restlessly in the grass, her head tossing and her arms jolting out at intervals to stop the fall her mind would not release from present memory. Around her moved the beautiful folk in their flowing robes, their pale faces grave.

  "Welcome home," said a rich, deep voice from behind her. "Too many years have you been apart from us, fair lady. Your home weeps in your absence."

  Dierdre looked up and to one side. The elven lord had once been a friend and a comrade, had fought at her side under Dwylleth's leadership—and had been, with other friends, sadly neglected of late because of her other interests. "Yes," she said sadly. "I've been away a while."

  She glanced around the Grove, and back up at her old friend, and touched his iridescent green robe. "But I'm home now."

  CHAPTER TEN

  Amanda-Abbey "woke" to find herself playing Barbie dolls in the den with Sharon. Daddy was in the other room—she could just barely see him in the kitchen corner with his long legs stretched out under the table, while he sat and watched her. She had no memory of where she had been, or of how she came to be playing with Sharon—and the dolls in her hands were doing something that made her stomach twist, although she didn't know why. It looked naughty and felt naughty. She moved the dolls apart and stared at her hands with dismay.

  What happens, she wondered, when I'm not here? Why doesn't Sharon notice that I just woke up? What, she thought with a shudder, has my body been doing without me?

  She busily started putting clothes on her dolls, so that Sharon wouldn't interrupt her while she was thinking. She thought about Stranger.

  Stranger had always seemed to be just a funny voice in her head, one that talked oddly and used a lot of words she didn't recognize, but Amanda-Abbey had always assumed Stranger was part of her imagination—like the elf had been. She had to wonder about the elf, however. Amanda-Abbey looked at the gold bracelet on her wrist and at her real mother's glass bead, and she wondered—

  Maybe the elf was real. And if the elf was real, maybe Stranger was real, too.

  Amanda-Abbey put down her dolls and dug her fingers into the cool, deep carpet. She stared at her hands, her odd, unpredictable hands, now pulling little bits of fiber out of the rug and rolling them into pills. Suppose—just suppose—Stranger is real. Then the place where she took me, the place where that awful girl with the flying knives and whips and stuff was hiding behind her walls, was real, too.

  Stranger is inside of me. Is the awful girl? Is that what happens to me when I'm not here? The awful girl comes out?

  "Don't pick at the carpet," her step-mother said, walking into the room. "That's destructive."

  Amanda-Abbey stopped and began to put her dolls away. She needed to get away, to think. There were things going on that she didn't understand, but she wanted to find Stranger and talk to her if she could. She wanted to be alone when she started looking for her. For some reason, it seemed important to be alone for that.

  "You said you'd play with me," Sharon whined.

  "I already did play with you," Amanda-Abbey said, hoping this was true.

  Now the whine was joined by a pout. "Not long enough."

  Amanda-Abbey decided that it was time to be firm. "Yes, long enough. I have stuff to do." When the pout continued, she tried coaxing instead of ordering. "Why don't you watch Turtles, now? I bet they're on."

  The pout turned scornful. "I already watched Turtles—they were on this mornin', dummy butthead. They're not on in the afternoon."

  Amanda-Abbey shrugged and finished shoving her dolls and doll clothes back into their storage case. "Watch something else. I gotta go clean my room." She got up and started for the stairs.

  "I want someone to play with me," Sharon wailed.

  From the kitchen, Daddy leaned around the corner and looked past Amanda-Abbey to Sharon. He said, "I'll play with you, honey. Just give me a minute to
finish my coffee."

  Something about Daddy wanting to play with Sharon all of a sudden worried Amanda-Abbey, but she didn't know what it was. Her stomach twisted, as it had when she saw what she was doing with the Barbie dolls. Confused, she walked to the stairs and up them, trailing her doll case. The stairs, too, made her feel a little funny. It seemed that today everything in the house made her feel a little funny. Amanda-Abbey decided that she was probably getting the flu like Bobby Smithers in her art class, and next she'd have a fever and be puking on everybody.

  She'd worry about that when it happened. Right now, she wanted to find Stranger if she could. She wanted to see if Stranger was real.

  In her room, she stretched out on her bed and looked out her windows. The clouds outside were low and dark, and for a moment she expected to see rain—but there was none. She didn't know why, but this surprised her.

  She lay very still. If she were someone else hiding in her body, where would she hide? She watched the clouds scudding by and wiggled her fingers tentatively. :Stranger?: she asked.

  There was no answer.

  :Stranger?: She closed her eyes and tried to hear the voice with its funny accent. :Stranger? Are you there?:

  :Aye, lass, I'm here. What are ye' huntin', then?:

  :I was looking for you—: Her thought faltered. It occurred to Amanda-Abbey that it was probably rude to ask someone to prove that they were real. Still, if she didn't ask, she wouldn't know. :Are you just my imagination, Stranger?: she asked.

  :Nay, I'm not that. I'm as real as you are—how real that is, I've no more way of knowin' than you.:

  With her eyes still tightly closed, Amanda-Abbey tried to see where the voice was coming from. She got impressions of a shadow, the outline of a woman—

  :If you're wantin' to see me, I'll give you a light, child. Before this, you nay wanted to look at me.:

  Amanda-Abbey considered that. It was, she realized, quite true. She never had wanted to see the face that went with the odd voice—not even the time she had seen that horrifying other girl, the frightening child behind all those walls. She had not looked into Stranger's eyes even when they had escaped, not even when the woman's arms had been around her, comforting her.