Trueheart (Portland After Dark Book 1)

by Mel Sterling

  "And what if you don't do this, and Aaron becomes like Rory, or d-dead, like Stephen? Get a grip, Tess." Her own voice startled her, but it also firmed her resolve. "You brought the damned things home, and nothing happened. You can take them out of here and nothing will happen."

  She set the tote on the sideboard, lifted the seeing stone to her eye, and one by one transferred the Queen's trinkets to the bag, taking only those things with the oily purple shimmer. With Rory, the hazelnut had worked, and maybe it didn't matter which thing she gave to Aaron, but maybe it would. Best to take them all.

  The things rattled and clinked against each other in the bag when she lifted it. She worried a little that they might reach some sort of critical mass, crowded together like that, but reasoned that they'd been sitting in her cabinet for months and nothing untoward had occurred.

  There were fifteen. A few more sat on the bookshelf at her office, but she'd already called in sick, and it wouldn't do to show up there looking perfectly healthy only to dash out again. If each trinket represented someone the Queen had paralyzed, Tess had found cures for a dozen and a half people. Yet she only knew a few young men fitting the same profile.

  If her wild guess was right, who were all the others? How could she find them? Tess imagined herself talking to the rehab center's director, explaining that all they had to do was give each addict a magical toy made by the local evil Queen of the fairies, and they'd be completely healed.

  Then she imagined being fired, and her license to practice taken away, and newspaper articles showcasing the sad state of mental health care at a certain rehab center in Portland. Lawsuits. Ridicule. She shook her head and went for her jacket and car keys. Outside, locking the front door, she stared around her, half expecting to see a kelpie or redcap lurking in the bushes. All she saw was her pumpkin, looking a bit more sinister and smirky than she remembered carving. She shook her head at her own overactive imagination, and fought the creeping sense of unease that urged her to go back inside and stay in bed with the covers over her head and the wall at her back for the day.

  Aaron lived across the Willamette. The Burnside Bridge was the logical route for Tess to take, but after the previous night, it was the last place she wanted to be, especially given Thomas's warnings to stay away. The creatures in Underbridge knew her Jeep now. What if they were watching for her? If Thomas was nowhere around...would she be able to take care of herself?

  As she drove through downtown, heading for the Hawthorne Street Bridge, well south of Burnside, she occasionally lifted the seeing stone to her eye. Some of the people she passed showed flickers of glamour, and at one stoplight a gargoyle on the side of a historic office building snatched an unwary pigeon off its stony head and stuffed the bird into its mouth, chewing with evident relish and letting several tail feathers fall to the sidewalk below.

  Shuddering, Tess tucked the stone away beneath her shirt and tightened her grip on the wheel.

  They were everywhere. Even in broad daylight.

  She shivered and drove on.

  Once again she parked down the block from the Eisley house and sat watching it, trying to build up her courage to knock on the door and ask to speak to Aaron. This time it was noon of a beautiful autumn day, sunlight firing the red vine maples and yellow ginkgoes. The neighborhood yards were filled with bright leaves raked into mounds on green lawns. Everywhere was the flicker of motion, the endless, slow downward twirl of leaf after leaf. Millions upon millions, all different, all beautiful, like Aaron. Like Rory. Anthony. Stephen. And how many others?

  She took a deep breath, grabbed the grocery tote, and walked to the Eisley family's front door. Crazy idea or not, she had to try.

  Aaron's mother answered Tess's knock, harried and tired-looking, her hair mussed, staring at Tess in confusion until she placed the tall counselor. "Ms. Gordon! Did Aaron call you? Is there news?"

  "Actually, I was looking for Aaron, if he's home. I wanted to talk to him. I've had an idea that might help him, and—" Just let me sprinkle a little pixie dust on him, and he'll be fine. I promise.

  Mrs. Eisley's face crumpled and she turned away, hiding her eyes behind her hands. She stumbled into the foyer, and Tess, alarmed, followed her. "You haven't heard."

  "Heard what?" A sick dread clenched Tess's stomach.

  "We haven't seen Aaron for three days now. He hasn't come home since Tuesday."

  "Not come home...have you called the police?" Her fingers twisted in the strap of the tote bag, longing to reach out, to comfort the weeping woman in the sunny hallway with its warm hardwood floors and bright white walls.

  "Of course we have. And nothing. Nothing! Are you sure you haven't seen him?"

  "Aaron's next appointment isn't until Monday."

  Mrs. Eisley stared at Tess, fresh tears welling up. "I don't know what I'll do if something bad has happened to my baby boy. I don't know...I don't know." She clutched at Tess's arm. Even through her jacket sleeve, Tess could feel how cold Mrs. Eisley's hands were. "Has he told you anything that might help us find him? Anything at all?"

  Tess stood, wracked with indecision. On the one hand, revealing Underbridge as the probable source of Aaron's problems might give his family and the police a place to start. On the other, the idea of sending unprepared people among the creatures there was tantamount to murder. While she opened and closed her mouth like a goldfish, trying to frame words, any words, that might help, the telephone rang. With a loud cry, Mrs. Eisley ran to answer it. Like a craven, Tess slipped out of the house, closing the door silently behind her.

  Outside, the wind had picked up. The sky was still bright blue, and a pile of leaves from the yard next door whirled upward. Tess hurried down the sidewalk, ducking her head against a sudden flurry of flame-colored leaves. The flurry thickened around her, the swirl tightening, leaves brushing her clothing and face, snagging in her hair, tangling her ponytail. Tess halted, her heart pounding. Nowhere else on the block were leaves moving, except in the slow drift of autumn. Nowhere else was there a leafy funnel-cloud attacking a pedestrian.

  Tess heard Thomas's words in her mind. If anything at all seems odd, look through it. Know when you're dealing with the fae. She fished in the collar of her shirt and hauled out the seeing stone.

  The moment she held it to her eye, the leaf storm lost energy and focus. Tess saw the crackle of what she now thought of as fae magic, strange glimmers that looked like nothing else on earth, though the rainbow sheen of oil on wet asphalt came close. This magic was dark as a bruise, spitting and sparking from leaf to leaf as they sank to the ground. Red, orange, yellow, bloody crimson, dried-blood brown.

  "Are you looking for me?" Tess demanded of the air. "Well, I have nothing you want. Go away. Bother someone else. Go away!" She clutched the tote bag tight to her chest, wondering if whatever had made the leaves swirl could tell she was lying. Tess ran through the settling leaves, hurrying to the safety of the Jeep. Would it have enough iron to block the fae commanding the whirlwind, the way Thomas's house was protected by iron? She fumbled the key into the lock, jerked open the door and threw herself and the grocery tote into the cab of the Jeep, slamming and locking the door behind her.

  Could it see her? The swirl of leaves was mostly still, only a leaf or two here and there still spinning downward. It had left a perfect circle on the sidewalk and grass.

  "Fairy ring," Tess gasped. But weren't those made of mushrooms, and not leaves? Still, it was too perfect a circle, which made it dangerous and unnatural. She crow-hopped the Jeep down the street while she fumbled for first gear and then second, looking behind her to be sure the leaves weren't following, heading for the Willamette to put running water between her and the fae outside Aaron's house.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  "WHERE IS YOUR MASTER?" THE bogle swung from Thomas's big grip, kicking and squealing. Thomas had snatched it as it squeezed out from under the roots of a maple, where it had apparently been dozing. He'd smelled the bogle's telltale odor of stale beer as he walk
ed one of the Forest Park trails and caused enough ruckus that it woke to see what was happening. The maple held its roots away from the bogle, reminding Thomas of nineteenth-century women lifting their skirt hems above the muddy streets of Portland.

  "I'll never tell the likes of you! Not fit to lick his boots!"

  "I leave that to squirmy little meat like you." Thomas gave the bogle a shake and caught its spidery fingers in his free hand. "Tell me, or I start breaking your fingers, one knuckle at a time. You've got a lot of knuckles, and every one will hurt more than the last."

  "I won't tell!"

  "Your choice." Thomas shrugged and chose the bogle's least finger, ignoring the creature's flailing and screeching. Any humans who happened to pass by the large boulder where the two of them struggled would think a pair of cats were fighting somewhere nearby. He began to squeeze. "Last chance. Look, there's a raven flapping in to have a snack. Think I can pop this joint off the end of your finger for him?"

  "Do your worst!"

  Thomas had to give the nasty little creature credit. If it lacked brains, it had bravado. He squeezed harder. Tess wouldn't approve of what he was doing, but he couldn't think of another way to get to Hunter. "Talk, you dribble of slime, or summon him." The bogle's knuckle gave beneath the pressure of Thomas's fingers. The sickening pop nearly made him vomit, but the bogle shrieked like a fire alarm and went rigid in Thomas's grip. Around them a number of trees awakened, stirring anxiously in the wet, clay soil. Knotty eyes blinked. Mossy mouths complained about interrupted naps. Two nearby birch girls turned their faces away, lowering their golden leaves to hide their eyes.

  Thomas shifted to the next knuckle, and the bogle flailed so hard he nearly dropped it. As he squeezed, every dead leaf within a twenty-yard radius suddenly took to the air in a furious, rushing vortex. Thomas could not see more than an inch or two in the violent flurry, with wet, half-decayed leaves plastering themselves to his face and body.

  "Master!" gibbered the bogle, weeping.

  "Go back to sleep, trees! This isn't your concern." Thomas flung an arm over his eyes to keep the tide of leaves at bay.

  "No, but it is mine, and the leaves obey my command. Release my hound." Hunter's voice, raw and sharp-edged, seemed to come from everywhere.

  "When we're done talking. If these leaves are yours, send them away."

  "Why do you seek me, human?"

  "I told you. Talk."

  "The time for talk is done. It is Allantide. Tonight I ride, and the moon makes all the earth mine. Be sure you are not in my path, Thomas Half-made."

  Thomas could hear the blood lust in Hunter's voice, an excitement verging on the sexual that appalled him but nevertheless roused an eagerness he could not entirely quell. His fingers tightened on the bogle, which shrieked again.

  I am not like you.

  It was the only way he knew to set himself apart, control the fae part of him that wanted to wreak havoc on this night of all nights. Tess.

  "You once sought information from me." Thomas shouted through the ceaseless wet slither and slap of leaves. Twigs and dirt joined the rain of leaves. Thomas wondered when the pebbles, and then perhaps stones, would add their pummeling to the storm.

  "You are too late, as always, no matter how clever you were, severing the ley line like that. For certainly you would have escaped me by no other means that day. Who taught you such a trick, weakling?"

  Thomas ignored Hunter's jab. How would he have explained the concept of human libraries, reference books, written by humans, about the fae? Sometimes the humans got it right. Instead, he kept on target with the topic he believed would interest Hunter the most: the Queen's plotting. "You were right, she is planning something."

  "As I told you." Hunter's terrible voice carried a note of boredom and Thomas realized he was losing his audience. "Kill the bogle or release it, but either way, make that noise stop before I finish it myself."

  "I saw you in Underbridge last night. Why were you following me? Was it at the Queen's bidding?"

  "I keep my own counsel. My choices are mine."

  Thomas knew his dart had hit home. Was it his imagination, or did the storm of debris lessen? "We all think that. It's what she wants us to think. She wants us to believe we make our own choices that just happen to align with her desires." He laughed, knowing a moment of ball-freezing fear when the leaves suddenly fell like stones, slamming to earth in ways no leaf would ever plummet. The bogle's eyes shot open, and its mouth closed, as Hunter seized it around its scrawny middle and ripped it from Thomas's hand. Hunter flung the creature away among the trees down the slope, where it rolled to a stop and lay unmoving.

  "That's four bogles you've ruined in less than a day. Where will you get more, if you keep wasting them like this?"

  Hunter circled him like a wolf circling a bear. Hunter's form was leaner and smaller, but Thomas knew he was no match for him. "You bait me, human."

  "I want your attention."

  "You have it. Be careful what you seek, for it may be granted."

  "You once offered me a share in something."

  Hunter's red eyes flicked suspiciously from right to left. "The forest has ears."

  "Aye, everywhere. I'll be quick and quiet, then. Tell me why you sent snares after me and mine, and I will tell you what the Queen wants."

  "You and yours?" Hunter's laughter was like lightning and thunder—quick and violent, intolerably loud. "That human you won from the kelpie?"

  "I'm waiting."

  In a movement almost too quick for Thomas's eyes to see, Hunter was upon him, mailed hand at his throat, the butt of his staff pressing between Thomas's legs, where his tender sac tried its best to shrink away. "Do not presume, you gobbet of human meat."

  "You came to my home, Hunter. You chased us through my streets. Underbridge is mine. The Queen gave it to me."

  "Yes, and why is that?" Hunter's tone grew thoughtful. "Why give it to a half-made who can hardly keep himself in check, let alone the entire goblin market?"

  "Because I am half-human. I know how to let the humans and the fae mix and yet be separate, and still allow the market to flourish. I am the law in Underbridge." This is going well, don't you think? He almost gave an insane giggle. Hunter disturbed him even more than the Queen, because Hunter's goals were unclear in ways the Queen's never were. "Do you want the market? Is that what this is about?" Thomas knew it wasn't, but pricking Hunter's ego seemed to be the only way to get the information he sought.

  Hunter flung Thomas away in disgust. "I do not want your leavings, Half-made." The red eyes burned, and from where he sprawled on the muddy ground, Thomas wondered that the deer skull didn't burst into flame. "Very well. Say your piece."

  Thomas took a deep breath, getting to his feet. He knocked away the worst of the mud from his oilskin, buying time to think. "The Queen has been marking the Underbridge and some of the streets around it, placing small trinkets soaked in her magic there. Someone has been stealing them, and it is my task to find the thief."

  Hunter's head tilted to the side in apparent thought. Thomas hated not being able to see Hunter's expression. "Go on."

  Thomas shrugged. "You wanted to hear what I know. That's what I know."

  "You summoned me for rubbish gossip like that?" Hunter advanced again, the mailed fingers flexing. "A waste of a perfectly good hound."

  "You ruined that bogle, not I. Now, why were you setting snares for me?"

  "You have told me nothing."

  "You made a bargain." Thomas tried not to swallow and reveal his unease. Hunter despised and destroyed anything weak and uncertain. And today of all days, with the moon building to its Allantide fullest, Hunter was strong, ferociously so. "Think about it. If someone has been taking the Queen's trinkets, that someone must be stronger than we realize."

  Hunter's red eyes slitted for a moment, as if the idea of an unknown quantity—a strong one—gave him pause. "Why is the Queen putting markers there to begin with? Has she not told you?"

>   "The Queen rarely shares her plans with me, unless those plans involve me."

  "She is cunning."

  "Keep your part of the bargain, Hunter."

  The deer skull swung slowly back and forth as Hunter stretched his neck to crack the joints there. "I was going to take what you knew of her plans from you. By force if necessary."

  Thomas snorted in disgust. "And the human with me?"

  "An unfortunate complication. It was you I wanted."

  "But you knew enough to set your hounds on her vehicle."

  "I remember all too well the pleasures of the flesh, Half-made. How vulnerable they make one. It's why our Queen enchants all her lovers, so she is never in thrall to human needs and desires. Your mistake was nearly fatal for you both. Next time you won't be so fortunate."

  "There won't be a next time," Thomas growled.

  Hunter's laughter flared again. "Do you threaten me, Thomas? You may have the Queen's preferment from time to time, but she will never prevent me killing you if it pleases me." He leaned forward, and the sunlight shafting through the naked tree limbs cast a dull glow over the offal-grimed armor. "And it would please me to be rid of you."

  "The Queen would be displeased."

  "But she would feast on your flesh all the same." Hunter straightened, stabbing the butt of his staff directly into the mound beneath their feet. The ground split, yawning into a great crevice, from which Thomas could hear the clamor of the fae preparing their Allantide festivities hundreds of feet below. "Go and tell her your news. See what it wins you to reveal her own plans to her."

  Thomas shook his head. "I will go to her when I have the thief in hand and not before." He tilted his head. "Though it does interest me very much to know you're planning to take her place in the court. I wonder what she'd say if I were to mention that."

  As a gambit, it was spectacularly successful.

  Hunter ripped his staff from the earth, which slammed shut. Around them, the wakened trees tossed and creaked, reacting to the snares of hunt magic that spewed from Hunter's gauntlets and staff. Thomas was caught in it, and tendrils menaced his face like striking snakes. He fought the instinct to close his eyes, and instead struggled to get a hand inside his oilskin, where his iron nails lay wrapped in their pocket. He doubted such a trick would work again, but he had to try. It was not in his nature to go down without a fight, even against such an invincible warrior as Hunter.