Bone Walker

by Angela Korra'ti

  Oh God. Dread tried to claw its way up my throat, but I swallowed it down hard before it could break free, before it could make me wail. Tamp it down, I commanded myself. It’s not about you!

  But I couldn’t make myself believe it, or keep the chill of that dread from coating my skin as I nodded back at Millicent. It bathed me in ice as I stole into my bedroom.

  I couldn’t tell when it would burn off.

  * * *

  Fortissimo was cuddled up next to Jude’s curled form on my bed, and my cat lifted his head as I closed the door silently behind me. He let out one little chirrup of approval at my presence, but didn’t otherwise move. I liked that; I liked him keeping watch over my friend.

  I didn’t so much like how Jude didn’t move at all as I came in. Was she asleep? Was she unconscious? Had the bone walker left anything of her at all?

  Then she muttered, “Go away, Ken.”

  My heart skipped a beat at the dullness of her voice. Still, she knew I was there; that had to be something, surely. “No can do, babe. Not ’til I know if you’re all right.”

  Jude finally rolled over to face me, though she didn’t break contact with the cat. “I just had my brain and body hijacked,” she snapped. “I was fucking well mind-raped. Do I look like I’m all right to you?”

  She didn’t, of course. The look on her face, a helpless, stricken fury, skewered me where I stood. Her face was gray with exhaustion, her cheeks streaked, and her eyes puffy with tears I hadn’t watched her shed. From the gaunt, haggard look of her, the alokhiu had burned at least twenty pounds off her, far too swiftly to be healthy for anyone’s frame. I didn’t want to think of what would have been left of her if the bone walker had had her until morning.

  “You look like hell,” I admitted hoarsely. “I am so, so sorry. I know how you must feel.”

  “How in the name of God could you begin to know—” Jude spat the words at me, in a more vicious tone than I’d ever heard her use, until she caught herself. Embarrassment flushed her ashen cheeks. In a much different voice she went on, “I’m an idiot. Of course you do.”

  Translation: because of my aforementioned dear departed uncle, who’d thought it was doing me a kindness to turn my brain to pudding before sacrificing me to Azganaroth. I’d tried to be strong about it, but a night blowing off steam with Jude and homemade kamikazes had driven me to flip out a bit at her in a way I couldn’t have done with Millicent or even Christopher. Only then had I felt it was safe to flip out.

  I owed Jude that same safety now.

  Sitting down beside her on the bed was a no-brainer, but I wasn’t sure what to do next. Should I pat her shoulder? Move the cat? Give her space? Heat crept into my cheeks at the recollection of having just recently had a little bit more contact than was typical with my best friend—and as I came closer, a second wave of red overtook her cheeks. “Do you remember all of what happened?” I asked, pretty damned sure I didn’t need to ask that question if she was blushing at my proximity, but better safe than sorry.

  “Enough to know I was feeling you up in the middle of a mall. Please say we’re not going to tell the boys about this. Any of the boys.”

  Even with a voice that was still too shaky and thin, that sounded a lot more like my Jude, and that settled the question of what to do next. I hefted Fortissimo out of the way, ignoring his disgruntled mewl of protest, and pulled her up to give her a proper hug. Jude made a noise rather like the cat, though that didn’t stop her from hugging me back, hard enough that I felt her entire body shaking against me.

  “What, you think I’m going to give them an excuse to fantasize about us making out?” I told her with the most deadpan tone I could muster. “Maybe not so much Carson and Jake, but the point remains! Word of honor, chica, I’m taking this one to the grave.”

  Jude giggled weakly. But she didn’t stop shaking and she didn’t let me go. That might have alarmed me, except that her embrace was entirely human now, and far more frail than it should have been… well, okay, I was still alarmed. Especially when she murmured, “She took over everything inside me, Ken.”

  “I know,” I whispered, patting her hair.

  “There wasn’t any room left for me. I couldn’t even scream. It wasn’t like that for you, was it?”

  “No.” When Malandor had thralled me, I hadn’t cared—I would have done anything he’d asked, because I’d forgotten about everything else. Which would have broken my brain anyway, but given that he was trying to feed me to Azganaroth, that wouldn’t have been a problem for long if his plan had worked. “I think I had it a little easier.”

  “You’re fey,” Jude rasped. “You’re magic. You can fight it off. I remember you fighting off her.”

  I grimaced. “Barely.”

  “But you did it. You got her out of me.” Jude went limp against me while my shoulder grew damp with her silently shed tears. “I’m just a human. I can’t do it. I can’t keep her out of me if she comes back.”

  “She won’t come back to you. I promise.” Not that I knew, when it came down to it, what the hell I was talking about—but Jude didn’t need to hear that. Or that the alokhiu had bailed on her only because it had found bigger, shinier prey, and that we might all wind up screwed anyway. The important thing here was the promise. When it came to that, I absolutely knew what I was talking about.

  Jude tried to giggle again, but it came out much more like a whimper than a laugh. “You’re not just saying that because you’re my friend, are you?”

  “Duh,” I replied, hugging her again. “Of course I’m saying it because I’m your friend. But I’m also saying it because I’m a goddamn mage. And hey, I may be on my learner’s permit still, but Christopher and Millie have my back. And we’ve got yours.” I’d been keeping it light, but now I added, soft and serious, “We’ll keep you safe.”

  As if to back me up on that, Fort wriggled back in between us, aiming for Jude’s arms. She cuddled him to her chest and then asked me, her voice very small, “Do you mind if I hug your cat till I fall asleep?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Will you stay too?”

  “I’ll be right here.” I pulled back so she could lie down and did what I could to tuck my quilt more comfortably around her. Her scent was strong on it, but not so strong that it drowned out the traces of Elessir I could still pick up from its folds. I frowned at those traces.

  And wondered, as my friend dropped into weary slumber, how else the Unseelie bard’s presence was going to alter my world.

  Chapter Fourteen

  When I emerged at last from my bedroom, with Jude sound asleep and Fort still keeping watch over her, I discovered three things.

  One, it was dark outside. At this time of the year in Seattle, the sun went down pretty early, but I needed neither my clocks nor my phone to alert me that the hour was later than I’d realized. My own exhaustion was enough to do that.

  Two, someone had ordered pizza—probably Millicent as she always had the presence of mind to remember to feed us, i.e., her younger and less wise subordinates, when we needed it. The scent of it hit me the instant I entered the hall, making my stomach growl in need, and I made a beeline for the source of the aroma. A couple of boxes were out on my kitchen table, along with a side order of breadsticks and stacks of plates and napkins. The others were at the table too, and as I came in, Millicent shoved one of the boxes in my direction. She and Christopher both had empty plates and full coffee mugs before them. Elessir, with the deliberate, too-controlled care of someone trying not to inhale his meal, was nibbling on a breadstick.

  I stopped dead before I reached the table, though, because my third discovery was standing slightly away from the others, not taking a place at the table or a share of the food. Melisanda had come back, and one glance at the tense look on the Seelie warrior’s face told me the distinct lack of Jake and Carson in her company wasn’t just limited to my kitchen.

  “Where are the boys?” I asked. I would have taken a bit of pride in ho
w calmly the question came out, except for how my hands began to shake and how a wild thought of them in danger, like Jude, shot across my brain.

  “We were just getting up to speed on that,” Millicent told me with a peremptory waggle of the pizza box she’d nudged towards me. “Eat something. You need the fuel and we need to decide what to do next. You”—this was directed to Melisanda—“tell the girlie what you just told us.”

  I reluctantly complied, but only because two months of learning magic from Millicent Merriweather had taught me that strong use of it wore me out eventually, and I’d been throwing around a lot of power all day. So yeah, I needed the fuel. But ravenous as I’d gotten, as keenly as I could smell the food, I had no idea what was on the pizza I pulled out of the box. All my attention was on Melisanda. “This had better suck less than what just happened to Jude,” I warned as I began to eat.

  “In the interests of brevity,” Melisanda replied, “I will say simply this, Miss Thompson: those with whom you share this roof, and I with them, found the nogitsune we sought. We were overpowered. For the sake of protecting his spouse, who took minor injury in our altercation, Mister Tanaka has pledged to remain with the nogitsune tonight. I have been sent back to convey the message that the nogitsune wish to parley with the Warders.” She paused, considered me, and added, “And with you.”

  Because I was in the middle of a bite—and because I would rather have set myself on fire than show any sign of my inward turmoil in front of either of the Sidhe—I took the time to chew, swallow, and then eye everyone in turn, trying to gauge their expressions. Millie and Christopher both looked about how I felt, which was to say, tired but stoic. Elessir still looked worn out, albeit less so now that he was eating, and I fought down the uncharitable inner voice that suggested he had to still be fried if he wasn’t turning up his nose at something as mundane as pizza. I had, after all, seen him eat Mexican food before, even if we’d promptly destroyed some of the restaurant as part of the meal in question.

  That left Melisanda, and I faced her in earnest for the first time since she’d shown up on my door, trying to take her measure. I had to admit, she seemed on the level. A couple of Millicent’s Warder colleagues had, I remembered, spoken well of her to me in email. Millicent herself appeared unperturbed by her presence. (Which was to say, she didn’t have her shotgun immediately at hand.) And the Seelie had fought alongside Christopher and me in Lake Forest Park.

  “Malandor was my uncle,” I finally said, entirely on impulse. “Are you related to me too?”

  The even, expectant stare Melisanda had trained on me wavered, not much, but enough that she actually blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

  “He and my mother were House Kirlath. You’re House Kirlath. Does that make you my cousin or something?”

  She blinked once more and then replied, “As I’m not in the direct descent of the House, we’re not close kin. If you wish to be specific, I believe we’d be second cousins, twice removed.”

  Her tone wasn’t exactly genial, but it wasn’t hostile either. I could deal with that, I thought, and offered a tiny crooked smile. “In other words, ‘or something’. Are Jake and Carson all right? You said Carson was hurt.”

  “Scrapes, a blow to his head from one of the nogitsune, and a bruised rib,” Melisanda reported. “But he was otherwise communicative. His spouse was unharmed when I left their company. For what it’s worth, I don’t believe the nogitsune will do them any further hurt.”

  “They’d damned well better not,” Millicent said, in a tone that made it plain she’d be grabbing her trusty Butch to shoot the nearest thing that provoked her at the slightest excuse. “The kitsune are just as bound by the Pact as the Sidhe, and I’ll get every city on the West Coast to raise Wards against ’em if they so much as mess up either of those boys’ hair.”

  That Millie hadn’t charged out the door with Butch in hand already was only a morsel of comfort, and not a very filling one at that, given everything else we’d already had to deal with throughout the day. “So what’s the plan?” I asked. “Do we talk to them?”

  “And how many of us?” Christopher’s eyes were as dark as they ever got, clouded with a suspicion he didn’t bother to hide as he glanced at the Sidhe.

  “The nogitsune will be expecting me,” Melisanda said.

  Silence trailed after her pronouncement, and through it, all our eyes turned to Elessir. With a hint of stiffness marring his usual grace, just enough to betray the effort of pulling his focus and strength together, he straightened in his chair. “I’m not exactly dressed for a social engagement,” he said. “And by dressed, I mean armed.”

  I wasn’t touching that one. My house, bolstered by Wards and brownies though it might be, didn’t include weaponry suitable for nine hundred-year-old Unseelie swordsmen in its protections. Christopher and Melisanda had weapons at their disposal, but each of them looked abruptly mutinous, and Millie cut them off with jabbed fingers before either one could say a word.

  “No arguments,” she ordered. “The plan, since the girlie here did ask, is this. We’re going. They’ve asked to talk, so we’re not going in hostile. But they’ve got Carson and Jake, so we’re not going unprepared either. As for you two”—this, of course, was to the Sidhe—“given your past histories in my town, I ain’t exactly brimming over with trust for either one of you.”

  “I’ve already stated my business here and have pledged to uphold the Pact,” Melisanda protested. She flashed Elessir a scalding glance and then added, “As has that one.”

  “And given that you both tried to kill Kendis,” Millicent snapped, “you’re going to have to pardon me if I trust your pledges only as far as I can spit. Actions speak louder to me than promises. You’ve been doing all right so far, but if you want to keep it up, your next action is going to be to take us to the nogitsune.” Without the slightest pause, she rounded on the Unseelie bard. “Since you don’t look like you’re going to die on the spot anymore, boy, and because quite frankly I don’t want you out of my sight, you’re coming with us. You don’t get a weapon. We don’t have one to spare you. I’ll assume that if things get lively, you’re capable of defending yourself anyway.”

  “Ah’ve been known to duck from time to time. Y’all at least gonna let me git somethin’ to wear, Miz Lady Warder ma’am?” Elessir’s drawl, thick and rich and sweet, was purest melted sugar.

  Since he was sounding far more normal, I magnanimously chose to overlook his sarcasm. “There aren’t any shoes in the house that’ll fit him,” I pointed out, “and he shouldn’t have to go out barefoot.”

  “Careful, Miss Thompson, a man might think a l’il ol’ gal like you might be concerned.”

  “Stow it. Do you have some way of getting clothes and shoes that will fit you?”

  Elessir’s attention circled around us all before returning to rest on me. “Magically, no.” The Southern honey slid back out of his voice. While he nodded briefly towards the Warders, his gaze on me turned speculative, thoughtful. “And as I doubt these two have taught you how to change the shape of things, you won’t be capable of that yet either.” I must have started, for a smug little grin flashed for a moment across his face. But before I could say anything he went on, “Fortunately for all our needs, I can resort to a more prosaic method: namely, money. Give me five minutes and an Internet connection, and I’ll be fit for public consumption in half an hour.”

  Millicent, frustratingly, showed no reaction whatsoever to the idea that she might have left something out of my magical training. “Kendis,” she said, “let the boy use your computer. Sonny, you have the half hour. Be ready to go by then, or else I’m dragging you out the door naked if I have to.”

  * * *

  The rest of us made what use we could of those thirty minutes. First and foremost, I called my Aunt Aggie. It was plain why we all had to go find the nogitsune, and just as plain that Jude was in no shape to either come with us or be left alone. I took two minutes to summarize for Aggie what wa
s going on and why we needed her. It took her twenty to pack an overnight bag and get to my house. Upon her arrival, she hugged Millicent, Christopher and me, greeted Melisanda with stiff courtesy, and for Elessir mustered nothing more than a grim nod—calling upon her personal ethic of ‘If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.’

  I would have invoked that protocol myself, but loaning Elessir my laptop so he could carry out Millicent’s directive required at least a minimum of communication. It also required maximum hovering, because while Elessir sleeping in my very own bed in my very own bedroom had bothered me deeply, his hands on my computer’s keyboard bothered me even more. Not rational, I know, but trust me when I say that a surefire way to get a geek girl like me nervous is to mess around with her computer.

  Mercifully, though, his use of the machine was brief. All it took was one email as well as Millicent’s leave to cross the city Wards to bring a dwarfish, stocky-framed goblin to my front porch a scant three minutes after Elessir sent his mail. Whatever portal had delivered him there had closed by the time I answered the doorbell, but wisps of its magic still lingered in the glow thrown off by the porch light, just enough for me to see and sense. The goblin himself was big as goblins went, about three feet high, and he was hanging on to the handle of a black leather wheeled suitcase almost as tall as he was.

  “Delivery,” he announced crossly, peering up at me. He had lamp-like pale eyes in a frog-green face, narrowed up hard as he considered me. I figured he was either nearsighted, disgruntled, or both. “Tell a’Natharion this is all he’s got left, and he’s damned lucky to get it, and I ain’t doing this again. Not worth my neck if the Queen catches me hoarding property she’s claimed!”

  Elessir had come up behind me as I’d answered the door. Before either of us could reply, or before the Unseelie could push past me out onto the porch, the goblin promptly went around to the other side of the suitcase and pushed it at us. With a rude gesture into the air, he opened up a portal just tall enough to accommodate him. Through this he stomped, making one further, ruder gesture back at Elessir as the portal closed behind him.