I went for it, keeping any trace of anxiousness out of my voice as I chirped into the receiver, “Hey babe. It’s Kendis, what’s with bugging out of here without even saying bye? No rosemary-and-rock-salt bagels for you. Call me!” For good measure, as soon as I flung that message at her, I followed it up with a text. Then I frowned at the Warders. “It’s not like her to run off like that. Not like her at all.”
“We should go find her.” Christopher got to his feet and studied me, brow furrowed under tousled hair. “To her apartment, if she’s after going there. She’ll be okay, Kenna.”
Millicent snorted. “We don’t know any such thing, not after what we saw go into her last night. But you’re right. You two kiddies are going to have to go after her. Do it while you’re walking the Wards.”
“While we’re walking? What about you?” I said, blinking.
“That Unseelie still sleeping in your bed says one of us needs to stay here.”
Oh God. Elessir. I’d forgotten about him in the waking haze, and I glanced down the hallway now as memory snapped back into place. “Is it safe for any of us to leave until we know what’s up with him? What if it takes both of you to keep him from going haywire?”
“I didn’t feel anything from him while I was awake,” Christopher ventured. “Or hear anything, for that matter.”
“Yeah, boy’s sleeping like the dead,” said Millie, “and I still ain’t getting hide or hair off him, magically speaking. Jake briefed me on his medical supplies and I ain’t above shooting him up with whatever it takes to keep him asleep either.” She jabbed a finger at me. “I want you back here before he wakes up if you’re what it takes to keep him calm. So git, the both of you.”
There wasn’t much for it but to do as Millicent bade us. Christopher and I did the absolute minimum to get publicly presentable, clothes- and hygiene-wise. Christopher had kept watch and then dozed in the same clothes he’d worn to the concert, so he was stuck with that, but I risked ducking into my bedroom long enough for something clean to wear. And more importantly, for the wolf’s head necklace Jude herself had given me, which Christopher had imbued with some of his Warding power. I hadn’t worn it much in the last couple of months, since things had been quiet enough that I hadn’t needed the protection, and I didn’t want to risk losing it.
I had the unpleasant suspicion I was going to need it now.
Breakfast would have to be on the go: granola bars and Gatorade. Fort demanded breakfast of his own, but Millie overruled my efforts to feed him and shooed us on out the door. Armed with my reloaded tote bag, I headed with Christopher out into the morning, and prayed as we went that this day wouldn’t end as disastrously as the one before.
* * *
She was cold through and through, and yet, she burned. It felt as though she should be ill, but Jude didn’t feel ill. If anything, she had enough energy brimming through her limbs that if she’d had a mind to, she could have jogged around the entire city. Walking the Wards, just like Millie, just like Christopher.
The thought made her giggle as she escaped Kendis’ house with no one within it the wiser. Power, just like the Warders, that’s what she felt as though she had. Magic to do anything she wanted, anything in the world, and all she had to do was seek it out—
Then the autumn morning struck a hammer blow across her senses before she even made it to her truck. Even the feeble sunlight of this particular land in the mortal realm was more than she’d felt upon her skin in time beyond counting. Clean, rain-kissed air was sweet wine to breathe in; the bright shades of leaves against the pale blue of the sky were such relief after immeasurable darkness that she almost wept at the sight.
Mortal realm?
Darkness?
Wait, what…?
Jude swayed, grabbing at the door handle on her truck for support, and even the simple contact of her palm against cool metal struck her speechless.
What’s wrong with me?
Then the voice from her dream came back, louder now, and every word that sounded across her mind wrapped her flesh in a cloak of snow.
Nothing at all is wrong with you, my little snowwoman, nothing that I can’t handle. You don’t need to worry about anything at all.
Right. She was a snowwoman, Jude remembered now. Shaped from the blowing flakes, packed into a pleasing shape by the clever unseen hands in the cold. Her chest was ice, her limbs shimmering frost, and she would be forever preserved and shining. All she had to do was just vanish into the snow.
I can do that.
Approval was the last thing she remembered before her mind’s eye filled with winter. She never felt the heat building in her hand, somewhere far outside the statue of snow she’d felt herself become, or sensed her fingers opening the door of the truck.
She never saw her own face, reflected in the window glass before her, smiling.
* * *
Christopher didn’t say much as we hopped a Metro bus to head to Jude’s apartment in Laurelhurst. I didn’t call him on it, at least not while we were still on the bus. Conversation about Sidhe and magic and the Unseelie bard we’d left in my bedroom wasn’t something I wanted to have where we could be overheard. He did at least keep an arm around my shoulders during the ride, and there was comfort in that, even if he stared out the window in a brooding funk the whole time.
Once we got off the bus and out of earshot of the stop shelter, though, I tugged at his hand. “You’re awfully quiet. What are you thinking?”
He slanted me a sidewise look, and one corner of his mouth curled up. “Petty, jealous thoughts. You don’t want to hear ’em, Kenna.”
Oh-ho-ho? I blinked at this and stopped on the sidewalk so I could loop my arms around Christopher’s waist. Two months this man had been my boyfriend, and he was still surprising me. “Wait, what? What in God’s name do you have to be jealous about?”
Christopher humored me, wrapping his arms around me in turn, though the gaze he turned down to meet mine was an unhappy one. “He clung to you like you were his last hope,” he said, “and I didn’t care for that, much.”
My face fell as I went still in Christopher’s embrace. “Neither did I,” I admitted. With that gaze of his upon me, dark against the wan October morning, I could offer nothing less than absolute honesty. “He scares me. Showing up out of nowhere like that, and who knows what the Queen did to him? And then Melisanda shows up out of the blue, and”—I flailed one hand about, seeking words that refused to let me voice them, and I had to finish weakly—“and everything else happened. And all I can think is how they’re Mom’s people, how I got that blood, and am I going to turn out like that someday?”
“If you can ask that question, lass,” said Christopher, “I’m thinking it’s not a problem.” His expression gentled, and he tipped his head down towards me, brushing his lips across mine. He did no more than that, since we were standing on a public sidewalk with early Sunday traffic trickling past us, yet that relatively chaste contact played havoc with the rhythm of my pulse. That he was in fact old-school in our relationship wasn’t something I really wanted to push, since I wasn’t done savoring its charm, not in the slightest. But when he made those sorts of overtures, with intriguing little presses from his hands… well. I’m as healthy as the next fey-blooded girl. I’m sure you can work it out.
Still, though, my smile was crumpled. “You don’t have anything to be jealous about,” I murmured. And, retro charm of Christopher’s courting me aside, I wasn’t done with honesty either. “For the record? The wrong guy was in my bed last night. Just so you know.”
A certain speculative gleam lit his eyes at that, and a grin I couldn’t call anything but male tugged at his mouth. “Good to know,” he murmured back. I had just enough time to wonder if my Boy Scout of a Newfoundlander was aware of the one-two punch of that smile and the dimple in his chin before he leaned in to kiss me again—and this time, because the street was momentarily clear, with quite a bit more zest. Go Team Honesty. All at once the morning was
looking up.
Which, of course, was the exact moment my phone had to buzz in my hip pocket.
Distracted, we sprang apart without quite breaking our embrace, and while Christopher didn’t lose his grin, it turned distinctly sheepish. “You’d best answer that.”
He was right, of course, but Team Honesty issued a collective sigh of disappointment in the back of my brain while I fished the phone out of my pocket. A text message was waiting on the screen for my attention. I almost sagged with relief when I saw it was from Jude.
Chica I know you’re on your way here don’t bother I’m okay really! Go about your business. I need to resume mine from last night. Hasta!
“She seems okay, or at least as much as I can tell from a text,” I said, blowing out a deep sigh and turning the phone around so Christopher could see what our friend had written. Which was nice and all, except for the part where I couldn’t quite manage to rid myself of my disquiet. Part of it was yet another stab of guilt as I remembered Jude had been dressed better than was normal for her the night before, and I couldn’t help but wonder if our phone call for transport had pulled her away from an actual date. The rest was the memory of the spectral shape that had escaped Elessir leaping quite literally into her, an image I couldn’t banish from behind my eyes no matter what else I tried to think about.
Christopher frowned. “Reads like something she’d write,” he agreed, but his tone was laced with doubt.
“And under any other circumstance I’d buy it. After last night, not so much, but what can we do? I can’t just barge in on her if she’s told me to go away, and we don’t have any evidence…” Several words in I realized I was babbling, but only when Christopher’s hands closed around my shoulders did it strike me as well that I’d started trying to pace along the sidewalk.
“Kendis. Breathe, lass. We’ll make it right.”
When we’d first met I hadn’t heard much of Christopher’s most steadfast voice—not while he was still fighting the idea of becoming a Warder, after sixteen years in hiding from his own heritage. But he had that voice now. His magic rang through it, not because he was a Warder as much as he was just Christopher, staunch and unshakeable. I let his voice and power soak into me, closed my eyes, and tried to calm down.
“She’s my best friend,” I croaked when I could speak.
“I know. I care about her too.” He took my hands, and at the press of his palms against mine, my own magic sparked up in hope. To that, Christopher squeezed my fingers. “And there’s nothing that says you and I can’t take a little stroll past her apartment. Or that we can’t do a little more than most to make sure it feels okay, yeah?”
“Yeah.” Relaxing, I bobbed my head. He made sense. We were out to walk the Wards, after all, and by that argument, a walk past Jude’s apartment complex was Christopher’s job. That it was also on the way to the next bus stop we had to reach if we wanted to catch a ride north to the next stretch of the city Wards was just bonus. “Let’s do this thing then.”
So resolved, we headed off towards the apartment complex where Jude lived, a few blocks and a corner or two away from the bus stop. There wasn’t much to the place, at least viewed from the sidewalk: a blandly earth-toned sign with a name and logo, blandly earth-toned buildings with tiny balconies facing out to the streets, occasional political or environmental posters in the windows. The young maples along the planting strip next to the sidewalk, on the other hand, were a welcome splash of color, unfurling vivid splashes of orange, red, and gold all along the street. Christopher and I slowed our steps beside them, and I made a show of getting out my cell phone and snapping a picture of the trees in their glory.
Beside me Christopher lingered, his hand loose in mine, just enough contact to let me tap into the wash of magic he sent rolling over the buildings beside us. Through him I could sense the people who lived in this place, and who in that living shone like beacons to the sight of Seattle’s Warder. Many were asleep at this hour on a Sunday morning, though some of the apartments stood empty—possibly because their residents were out at church. Only one of those sparks of life meant anything to me, though, and I knew Christopher had found Jude when I was suddenly keenly aware of her presence, as aware as if she stood before us.
“She’s in there,” I said, pocketing my phone again and looping my arms around him as a car came by. It slowed and turned into the apartment complex, and so I kissed my man, the best of all possible excuses for why we might dawdle right there and then on this particular sidewalk.
“Yeah,” Christopher rasped in reply when he pulled away. His hand came up to trail along the back of my ear, a gentle touch that made my mouth go dry. Not only were my ears pointier than they’d used to be, they were more sensitive as well. That wasn’t, however, enough to distract me from the regret in his eyes. “But I can’t tell if there’s anything odd about her. Not from here.”
I had no real call to be surprised by that; neither he nor Millicent had picked up anything from her from within arm’s reach in my living room the night before. “We should go on about our business then, I guess,” I said.
“Are you sure, lass?”
“No.” The word came out as the sigh I was trying to repress, gruff and awkward. Team Honesty had its flip side, and had for me ever since I’d learned that the Sidhe had a thing against lying. I’d been uncomfortable about even the smallest of white lies ever since. “But we should go anyway. The Wards need you, and we’d better not stay away from my place for long.”
He nodded with a look on his face that made me suspect he knew exactly what that admission said about my state of mind, yet wasn’t going to say a word about it. In a grateful rush I thought, for the very first time since I’d ever laid eyes on him, I could love this man.
Right on the tail end of that, with a simplicity that stopped me in my tracks, came an addendum. I do.
For several long moments that one concept distracted me from everything else. I’d never been swimming in boyfriends even before my changeling blood awoke. Being an African American geek chick had pretty much assured me of that, since that had been weird enough on its own. And once I’d turned into a living poster child for human-Seelie relations, my world had gotten a lot weirder. But it also now included Christopher, and I could no longer imagine it without him at its core. A strong, deep part of me was certain that between us, we could handle whatever else the world of magic, of Warders and the fey, wanted to throw at us. Tortured Unseelie bards, resentful Seelie warriors? No problem. Bring it.
Another part of me, though—the part that was worried sick about the ghostly shape last seen vanishing into Jude—wasn’t so convinced.
That part of me prayed that the two of us would be enough.
Chapter Seven
Warding a city, or so I’d learned in the months since I’d met Millicent and Christopher, was a larger-scale version of the effort required to Ward a single house. It required tapping into the life energy created by every creature, human or otherwise, who lived, worked, or did anything else within the city limits. Each and every activity that went into weaving the fabric of a city’s daily existence counted towards the pool of magic that could be used to Ward it. The magic from actual city residents was best, though the lesser hit that came from people who lived outside the city but commuted into it for work was substantial. Even the fleeting glimmers of power you could get from travelers just passing through did their part.
By her personal tradition, Millicent had for the last fifty years, rain or shine, risen to travel as far around Seattle’s borders as she could each morning, pouring power into the city Wards. Now that she had Christopher—and by extension, me, since I seemed to be a walking battery for his power—she’d leaped at the chance to make him cover even more territory than she could.
Two months after the fact, I understood the basic whys and wherefores, or at least I thought I did. There was a kind of music to it. Literally, since Millicent and Christopher both almost always busked whenever they wen
t out, she with her whistle and he with the bouzouki that was seldom out of his reach. Most Warders, Millie had told me, were in fact musicians. When they were constrained to their chosen cities for their entire lives, music gave them all a way to keep from going stir crazy. Even more importantly, it channeled Warder power.
When we had time to spare, I brought along my violin and played with them. This morning, however, we had no such option. We’d left the house without our instruments, and it wasn’t as if I was in a good space for playing anyway. Even with Christopher’s hand in mine as we caught another bus to take us up towards Lake City Way, I had to fight down resentment.
Yeah, I know. I was out with my boyfriend on a pretty autumn morning, without anything that normal people would call a care in the world. You’ve probably got opinions on what violin I should have been whipping out for just such an occasion. World’s smallest, am I right?
And yet. As much as I wanted to support Christopher in the work he was about to do, right then I wanted nothing more than to bolt right back to Jude’s place and sit her still until I was convinced she was okay. Or, better yet, make Millicent do it for me. Meanwhile, there was the need to drag Christopher off somewhere quiet-like and tell him I loved him. Or rip his clothes off. Not necessarily in that order.
In between all of that, flashing through my brain like frames from a faltering video, I kept seeing Elessir’s haggard face. That I couldn’t banish it, not even on the strength of newly realized love, scared me into troubled silence all the way to 137th.
Christopher didn’t seem to mind, thank God. He kept an arm loose around my shoulders during the ride, and once we paid our fares and got off, he slid his hand down to mine with companionable ease. Once he spoke, though, it was a welcome jolt to my system.
“So I’m thinking, want to head to the lake and work our way back down, then?”
Bone Walker Page 6
