Speaking of a library, now I was bored. With her out of it, I had nothing to keep my mind occupied except for the endless circle of worries. Who was after us, what minions were moving in the shadows against us, just why were they targeting Bella so hard... I couldn’t get answers without more data. My turn to login to the wifi on the ship.
My little laptop could run on the regular internet, of course, but what I needed was somewhere Google couldn’t go. Spells locked into the case let me reach across the border into Underhill, and send a message to my nephew Devon. I hated to bring the boy into this, but he was one of the very few I could trust right now. I couldn’t walk into Court blind, not now that I knew an ambush was waiting.
He responded in seconds, making me wonder how closely he had been watching for my message. The little text box blinked, and his words scrolled up.
:Uncle Lom, where are you? Mother and Grandmother are worried.:
I smiled. He was refreshingly mannered compared to the human youth I encountered. I typed back, :All is well, on my way to Court. I need your help with something.:
:Anything, you know that.:
:I need to be sure you will be discreet. It is getting dangerous in Court.:
I remembered that age, charging headlong into heroic efforts. It was amazing I had survived, and I definitely was no longer ‘intact’ from my idealistic youth. I didn’t want him following in my footsteps.
:Yes, Uncle. It is my duty to the Family to be around to produce the next generation.:
I could almost hear the sarcasm in the writing. He had gotten something from me, after all.
:I need to know who is at Court, and who plans to arrive in the next week. Listen to your mother’s conversations. She always has all the gossip.:
:Ugh. I will, but really, isn’t there an easier task to do? The Augean stables, perhaps?:
I suppressed a chuckle with a glance at Bella. She was unmoving. The kid had a sense of humor, also from me.
:Sorry, kid. I’d rather shovel shit, too. I’ll check in before we cross the border. Thanks, Devon.:
:YW, Lom:
He typed back, and I signed off with a sigh. He was good about text speak with me, but at the moment I felt a little like Alger. What was the younger generation coming to? I knew, having spent most of my adult life in the human realm, after a childhood all but imprisoned Underhill, that humans were far different than Folke. Most of the Folke, though, had no idea, choosing to spend all their lives in their own realm. Not a bad thing. Too much magic up above and bad things happened. Which is why I had job security.
Humanity might be obsessed with cute fairy tales, supernatural creatures, and the ilk, if you watched enough popular entertainment. But if they met the real thing, there was going to be trouble. A banshee alone could wreak more havoc than an average human could imagine. And now what was I doing? Why, teaching a half-fairy half-human magic, and how to cross the border to Underhill.
There were times it just didn’t pay to get up in the morning. To top it all off, I was going to need to venture out and collect some essential supplies. With Bella in a trance, which I hadn’t anticipated, I was in dire need of reading material. I spoke to her, softly, telling her that I would be back in a few minutes. She didn’t acknowledge me, but I knew from experience that she would have processed it unconsciously.
Following my usual procedures, I left the room secure, and made my way to the lounge. It was abandoned, but I had noted something in passing, and now I made my way directly to the small bookshelf. Stuffed full of ratty magazines and paperbacks left by passing travellers, it looked wonderful to me. I doubted there would be a title on it that I wanted to read, but I was willing to settle for the back of a cereal box, at the moment. As long as action was happening, I didn’t mind, but when life was slow, I needed to read.
The battered copy of a blackpowder magazine was a pleasant surprise, the closest thing on the shelf to what I considered professional reading. The copies of Soldier of Fortune I left well enough alone. It had devolved from useful entertainment to conspiracy mall ninja theories that were worse than useless. A few slim paperback novels by my favorite Western author I pounced on. To a Faerie world kid those had been pure fantasy for me, growing up.
I finished off my stack with a couple more whose covers looked attractive, and looked around. No one seemed to have noticed or cared about the short guy pilfering the ship’s library. I made my escape. Back in the room, Bella remained still, and I dropped my loot on the bed to decide where to start.
Reading allowed me to stay quietly in the room for the rest of the day, only venturing out for food. I skipped the sandwiches, which I was mightily tired of, and ventured into the restaurant for a take-out meal, which I shared with the compliant Bella. We had no refrigerator for leftovers, which would have been convenient so I didn’t have to keep leaving her.
I slept fitfully that night, having decided that if Bella was still out of it in the morning, I was going to have to contact Alger. We docked in early afternoon, and I couldn’t explain a woman in a trance state to the authorities. Sure, I could use a wheelchair and take her off that way, but people had seen her board normal and under her own power. There would be raised eyebrows about what I had done to her if she left in this state.
Breakfast was cinnamon rolls, messy to feed her, but tasty. She ate like a little bird from my hand, soft-faced and off in her own little world. I hoped she would remember much of this when she snapped out of it, because I was pretty sure she would not be happy to have been catered to like this. I got her into the bathroom, and was contemplating how to bathe her if necessary. Not the way I wanted to see her body, but again, she wasn’t going to be able to do it on her own.
I sat on the bed, facing her. Her eyes were half-open, but no-one was home. I had seen this before, but it was always unsettling.
“Bella. I know you’re in there. I need you to be with me, for a while, so we can leave the ferry.”
“Going to see Fairy,” she mumbled.
I sighed and rubbed my face with both hands. Well, at least I’d gotten a response. She was close enough to the surface to be aware of me. I’d try again later. I picked a book out of the stack on the floor and lounged on the bed.
A short while later, that book hit the wall with a satisfying thud. The scuzzy writer had attempted to take a classic H. Beam Piper series and redo it, and had wound up creating a cynical, depressive, PC pile of crap. My copies of the Fuzzy books were too far away to wash my brain out, and I was feeling rather sick.
“Lom?” Bella’s voice surprised me, and I rolled over to sit up and look at her. She looked back with clear eyes and a little smile. “I always thought the book against the wall was a metaphorical thing. I was raised to treat books with respect.”
“That one didn’t deserve anything other than to be put out of it’s misery.”
She stood up and luxuriously stretched, and I swallowed and looked away. At least now I wasn’t thinking about stories that were merely thinly veiled propaganda. This might be worse, though. I could hear her little moans as she found stiff muscles and worked them out, and tried frantically to distract myself. The sounds she was making were involuntary, and not loud, but my mind was wondering if she made them during other activities, too.
She wound up on her knees in front of me, and I couldn’t help looking into her eyes, slightly below mine, for a change. She was smiling again. “Thank you for the wonderful gift, Lom.” She reached out and took my face between her palms and kissed me softly.
I froze. The world went away for a long moment. I’d had no idea that she saw me as anything other than an unwanted intruder, and barely tolerated escort. The kiss lasted an instant of her thanks, and then she leaned into me with a little murmur of surprise and the contact deepened. I lost my mind and kissed her back, thoroughly. If you’ve ever kissed someone well enough to lose the outside world and create a pocket universe with only the two of you in it, time and cares locked out, then you know what it was
like. If not, I’m sorry. Keep trying.
Chapter 9 - Moire LeFay
I don’t know how long that lasted. It can’t have been as long or as short as it seemed. She leaned back, slowly, with a sigh, her eyes half closed. I snapped back to reality, where kissing my charge might well be a crime punishable by death and disgrace to my family, and rolled off the bed and away from her.
“Let’s get off this boat.” I announced over my shoulder, shoving things into our bags willy-nilly.
She didn’t speak to me again, just took a spot to my left and a half-stride behind me. I thought it was a good compromise to my need for her to let me take the lead without making her look like a beaten woman. My head was spinning from the aftereffects of that kiss. If I explained to her why it wasn’t going to happen again - ever - I risked both giving her a lot of leverage over not only me, but my family. Almost equally as bad, I could hurt Bella by rejecting her. I knew what I was expected to do. I didn’t know if I was going to do it.
We could run. Who would come after us? I was, no immodesty, just fact, the best in the business. I could keep us safe for a human’s lifetime. My family, though, would bear the brunt of my disloyalty.
I stumbled through the debarking procedure and somehow found myself standing in the building we debarked into, not having our own vehicle like most of those riding the ferry. I shook my head to try and clear it and focus on the job at hand. I needed to rent a car, and get us out of here, fast. There were bad guys, and distraction could get us both killed. I really wished she hadn’t kissed me... no, I didn’t wish that. It couldn’t happen again, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to remember it for a long time.
I fished my cell phone out of my bag, noting that it finally had bars again; it hadn’t for a good part of the last day. We had had intermittent wifi on the ferry, and cell service only a little better. I didn’t have contacts in town, so a straight rental car would be my only option until we reached Oregon.
Bella sat down on a nearby bench and closed her eyes again. I conducted my business with half my mind on her, concerned about this development now, on top of the kiss. Once I had scheduled a car delivered to the terminal in a half-hour, I hung up and bent close to her.
“Bella?”
“Yes?” She answered without opening her eyes.
“Are you all right?”
“I’m...” She sounded faint and far off. “Still processing.”
“Oh, sh...” I broke it off. Time to make a plan B.
I made a few more calls, and by the time the car arrived and I signed over my life to get the keys, I knew what I was going to do. Bella was compliant but visibly not-right as I helped her into the car and buckled her up. She closed her eyes and leaned back, so I lowered the seat back a little for her.
The hotel I’d called around to find was on the outskirts of town, right off Highway 5 headed toward Seattle. I left her in the car and nervously checked in. The clerk gave me a suspicious glare. Evidently requesting a ground floor room on the corner was a red flag. I hoped she didn’t see me helping Bella in, or she’d label me a serial killer for sure.
I know I looked odd, helping a woman who was a head taller and had a few pounds on me, into the room. I got her laid down on the bed, and then looked around the room and swore out loud. There was only one bed. In getting the room strategically placed, I’d neglected to make sure it was a double bed room. Bella curled up on her side, murmured something unintelligible, and was out again.
I walked outside and called Alger. This was decidedly not normal, and he had some explaining to do. The whole Family was liable for this girl’s safety and well-being, and he had endangered that.
His voice crackled oddly on the phone. “Hello? Lom, is that you?”
“Yes, Alger. Who else would it be? Everyone else can use magic to contact you.”
“True, true. And how is our Princess?”
“Don’t ever let her hear you call her that. She’ll have your balls on a plate.”
I could almost hear his wince. “So vulgar, my boy. I’m rather attached to them.”
“She’s still in a trance. She came out of it, I thought, and I got her off the ferry, and then she told me she is still processing, whatever that means. Oh, and she absolutely hates your indexing system.”
“She understands the card catalog?” His voice was a mixture of taken aback and elated.
“Um, I guess so, but she sounded annoyed about it.”
“Excellent news, m’boy!” he boomed over the phone. The crackling got worse, and I pulled the phone away from my ear. That hurt.
He went on, “I never thought she would be able to access the library on that level. Why, this means we will have an Archivist again!”
“Alger!” I raised my voice, then looked around to make sure no one had heard me. I went on in a more normal tone. “We have a girl to deliver safe and sane, remember? She’s not a member of the Family, and Whatthehells did you do to her?”
“I gave her the library.”
“The whole library? I thought you said it was something to help her learn magic.”
“Well, yes, that was the surface layer. But you know, you can never know too much.”
“Alger...” I gritted out through clenched teeth. “How long will she be in trance state? We have very bad things after us, and I need to get her Underhill. I cannot do that while she’s like this.”
“Oh, I know. I have no idea when she will finish sorting through it. Everyone’s brains are different, you know.”
At his smug tone I looked around for a wall to beat my head on. Not being near a handy one, I settled for hanging up on my uncle. Then I went looking for food. We had a small refrigerator in the room, and obviously I needed to stock it, because she was going to be ravenous when she was done digesting this spell.
I had been blinking in and out of the Sight all day, watching for magical use, and I was exhausted. It was still daylight outside when I sat down in the chair to watch over her, and nodded off. I twitched in and out of sleep a couple of times, and then drifted into a nightmare I’d hoped to never have again.
The banshee was my friend. I’d met her when I was a wee child, on the day everyone was crying. The tor rang with wailing, and I crept silently in the hall on wobbly legs, trying to find someone who would explain to me the grief that had washed through our halls. The woman in grey who languished in Father’s chair, her long, thin white fingers caressing the wolfhounds carved into the arms was perhaps not a logical choice of person to approach and ask, but even as a toddler my relationship with my mother had been uncertain.
“Why are you cryin’?” I asked her in my high baby voice. She stopped, abruptly, and looked down at me. It was only later with the eyes of adulthood in the dreams that haunted me I could see the terrifying eyes of the banshee, rimmed with red, and the thin face that clung to the bones of her skull.
“You...” her hoarse voice grated at my ears, but it was better than the thin wailing. I held my ground on stumpy legs. “Are not afraid?” she finished, wonderingly.
I waited for her to answer. Adults, I had already learned, did not behave in predictable fashions. I would ask again if she didn’t answer, but not too soon, for that would earn a smack of punishment.
She crooked a finger at me, one of those impossibly slender fingers, tipped in a shiny green polish. I obeyed the unspoken wish, and ventured to her knees, resting one starfish splayed hand on hers when I got there. In the dream lucidity, I looked down at those little fingers which were mine and wondered just how young I had been when this happened.
Her tone now was different, “you are not afraid.” This was calm, even warm, as she held out her arms to me in the universal gesture of a woman to a small child. I climbed into her lap, and she cuddled me close to a bony chest as she sang a short, sad song. I didn’t mind that as much as the wailing, but I was still waiting for my answer.
I ventured to ask again. “Why is everyone crying?”
“Ach, now
. Your Father has gone to the great sleep, and shall return no more.”
“Does that mean he is dead?”
“It does child, it does.” She sighed over me, and gave me a little squeeze. “You maun run along now, darlint, and let me do my wailin’.”
“But why must you? It hurts my ears, and I would rather have a story from you.” I ended on a hopeful note, with an attempt at a winsome smile, for I did love stories.
“It is my duty, childling. I promise you a story another time. Do not forget.” She admonished, which I thought was unnecessary. I never forgot anything, my mother often told me so.
She put me down, and I clung to her dress for a moment while she petted my head and cooed over me. “Go put cotton in your ears, baybee, and rest a little.” She sent me out of the room, and I fled for my own bed to do as I was told, her wailing already beginning behind me.
My dream jerked a little, and suddenly I was taller, stronger, and running down the corridor of dark trees rather than my ancestral hall. I stumbled, but kept on, for I remembered this part of the dream all too well. There was a monster chasing me. If I fell, I would feel the hot breath and crack of my skull, then all would go black. The dream usually ended that way, and I would awake with a strangled cry, my bedclothing wrapped tightly around me, and bathed in cold sweat.
I ran anyway, even knowing how it would end. Maybe someday I would outrun the monster... The banshee stood in front of me, her arms outstretched and surrounded by an eldritch green light. She screamed at what was behind me.
“It is not his time! You shall not touch mine!”
I fell at her feet. This was not part of the dream. I was still a youth, I could feel the difference in myself, the vitality with no pulls of old scars and the lagging sense of achiness that kept me company since the poison had entered my body. I rolled over and looked up at my rescuer, her face still contorted into a snarl, and realized this was no dream.
Pixie Noir (Pixie for Hire Book 1) Page 9
