Emerald City Dreamer (21 page)

"
Sunday, Monday, Tuesday..." the faerie sang. He glanced back and forth, clutching
The Stranger
to his chest.

When she reached the sidewalk, he began walking backward, away from her, towards the intersection.

"
Why are you following me?" she demanded. "What do you want, prick?"

He cast his eyes to either side, still looking for an escape, until he bumped into the bronze statue of Jimi Hendrix that filled half the sidewalk. He stopped and stood up a little straighter.

"
There is... no crime... in looking, my sweet. In listening. In devouring."

"
Don't call me that!" She stepped right up to him, in his face, and jabbed a finger into his chest. She wished it was the knife from her boot, but she could hardly use it out here, on this busy street. "You better leave me alone. Leave
us
alone."

His smile faded and he suddenly seemed frustrated. He chewed his cracked lip and crinkled the pages in his fingers.

She had him scared. This guy was not powerful, like Haun, and she had him in the human world where he was weak.

"
I'm not some normal dreamer for you to feast on, got it? I'm a hunter, a faerie hunter, and we are going to
find you and kill you
. Hear me?"

He grit his teeth, growing more frustrated, and Jina realized he didn't seem to be listening to her. He rolled away from her finger and the statue, and took off running.

Then it dawned on her. He'd tried casting something on her, tried some spell, and it hadn't worked because of the amulet. Which meant...glamour.

She began the little song again to bind him, but he had disappeared around the corner.

"
Fuck," she said aloud. "Fuckity fuck on a stick!"

She should have tried the rooting spell sooner. She should have bashed him over the head with the guitar. She should have stabbed him. Anything. Now he was still free, and headed in the direction of Neumo's.

Nevertheless, she felt powerful. She stood up straight, holding the guitar case in both hands, beaming. She'd faced down a faerie, and won. He ran away like a chicken shit. The ward had held strong in the face of point-blank faerie magic, and it worked so well she didn't even know he was trying.

She grinned and kept walking. She crossed the street, past the long line at the ice cream shop, past the Century Ballroom, down the dingy street full of auto shops, and past the busy hot dog stand with its sizzling and meaty smells.

It still irked her that he would be there, in the audience. At least he had no power over her.

None of them did, not anymore.

JETT WOVE HER WAY THROUGH the crowd to get closer to the stage. Not too close; she wanted to see.

Now that the opening band had finished, Neumo's was filling up fast. It came as no surprise, given Jina's talent, for her band to attract a fan-following. Imagine, starting a band, building a fan base, turning down a contract, and starting a new band that rises again.

Jett smiled to herself. And a good thing, too, that Jina was here and not on national tour promoting a Top 40 rock album.

"
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Fates of Surrender
!"

The crowd cheered and Jina took the stage wearing a black satin-and-lace nightie and high heels. Her guitarist and drummer followed. A chord rung out from Jina's own guitar, electric this time, not the acoustic she'd had at 619 Western. Immediately, she screamed into the mic and the drums kicked in hard.

Toradh, the kind that comes from an oft-played live song, sprinkled down, mellow like powdered sugar. Occasionally, fresh toradh would flow, as Jina and the band improvised.

While I'm wondering who to save,

I will love you to your grave.

You can fend off my attack,

But my heart will bring you back.

Such a delicacy,
blas na haislinge
a beautiful mix of sweet and spice. She wanted this one for her very own. To seal her away, forever.

Jett fought down the dark desire. Bottling up such a talent never bore fruit. The best mead is mead which is shared.

She would take her home and keep her as a
ceile
in the same way she kept Ramon. A ready source of energy, tasty and fulfilling, like a Snickers bar. Not just that, but a woman she wanted to hold and taste and protect and touch.

The audience pushed closer to the stage, swaying in time to the rhythm, throwing up their hands in the sign of the horned god. Jett had seen this hand sign used in many ways, including as an attempt to ward off her own power. These days, it signaled the approval of a group in pleasant thrall to loud music. She threw up the horns herself. The floor shook as people jumped up and down to the heavy beat of the drums.

She let the toradh flow through her, and it was tempting to let it take over, but she walled it away.

Something about Jina's
blas na haislinge
reminded Jett of Blathin. And something about her spirit. Could they be one and the same, reborn? Some believed in the concept, of humans being reborn again and again like the fae. There was no way to know for sure and the gods, when they'd seen fit to mingle with the lowborn, had not seen fit to clear up the debate.

If they even knew.

She found herself falling in love with this one. Too soon.

There were a number of other fae in attendance, both faeborn and unborn. Many of the unborn lurked on stage trusses and perched on the lights. Some held jugs of ale, dangling their legs down watching the performance in good spirits. One old lutin hugged the furthest corner with his arms crossed and his face twisted into a snarl as if he thought the music was too loud.

Three other faeborn dotted the room. No doubt such groupies always came to see Jina. Merely scavengers, but just in case, she marked Jina as her own by shooting a dart of glamour at her. A Cupid's Arrow. Now they would all know this dreamer was under her protection.

Jett caught a feeling of tension in Jina's aisling. She looked up and found Jina glaring down at someone skulking at the edge of the room. He stood on tip-toes to glare at Jina with his red eyes, and then he turned to look at Jett. Jett glared back.

A korrigan. Pogswoth. An ugly creature, hunched, with huge pointy ears and an enormous nose firmly implanted on his wrinkled, boil-ridden face. His lips were dry and cracked and bleeding. He wore a tattered coat and a threadbare scarf. In contrast, his hair grew long, silky, and luxuriant, as if he could be in a shampoo commercial.

Jett knew him. Though solitary, he was not content to stay isolated, as was his right. He frequently flaunted the authority of the few remaining gentry.

In a flash, he was by her side, even though a throng of people had been pressed between them. He smelled faintly of piss. She stared down at him sternly.

"
She's mine," he grumbled. His voice churned like rocks in a concrete mixer.

"
Not anymore, Pogswoth. Find another dreamer."

"
I found her first."

"
And you would take her from us, would you?" Jett tilted her head toward the stage. "Take her from the world so that none of us can hear her? Rend her to death in a mildewed knowe?"

"
She's mine. Another few weeks, and she'll be where none of you could find her, could steal her from me. Just waiting. Till she's alone. Without protection."

"
Well you can't have her anymore, Pogs. I have claimed her."

Pogswoth clinched his fists and grit his teeth. "Found... her... first."

"
I said: Find someone else." Jett drew upon her powers of command which had been scored into her soul by her rights as a double-daughter of the goddess Flidais, as a sorceress of the Tuatha D
e Danann
in a former life, and by her centuries of leadership as gentry in this. "Be gone," she ordered, words infused with glamour.

His eyes turned even redder and he ground his teeth quite audibly. But he did not leave.

There had been a time when any lowborn would obey her command to fall down and die, because it was his place to do so. Now, the democratic ideals in human minds warped the creatures of dream to undermine the rightful order of the fae. Pogswoth seemed to take these ideas most seriously, and it eroded the power she had over him.

Jett stood up as straight as she could and directed a commanding finger at him. But instead of bowing and scraping a retreat, he began laughing.

"
All your might is borrowed from others, and I choose not to lend."

Casually as that, he turned back to listen to Jina. To turn insult to injury, he leaned in, his stinking breath on her face. "The arrow flew fast and true, but it did not strike its mark. She'll be mine before the month is out." The korrigan grinned and made his way to the bar.

He was insane. Jina was marked with a Cupid's Arrow. Jett's arrow. It put her outside the grasp of all these lower creatures. Only a noble from courts higher than hers had the right or power to overcome such a spell. Pogswoth could ignore her orders, but the arrow itself would shield Jina. He couldn't so much as breathe on her.

Yet he had acted like he knew something, some way to break through a time-tested enchantment.

Impossible.

Jett looked up into the rafters at a handful of the smaller nykks who hung there. They would not defy her. She caught each of their eyes in turn, pointed at Pogswoth, then pointed at the door. It took a considerable amount of glamour, but here there was plenty to spare.

Only two seemed happy to do her bidding, but all five clambered down and descended on Pogswoth. They jabbed and needled him, spilling his beer, jumping on his shoulders, pinching his skin wherever they could, until he drew the gazes of the surrounding concert-goers and finally the bartender and bouncers. To them he would have seemed crazy and drunk.

One of the bouncers took a warning step towards him.

Pogswoth took the hint and left by the side door before any human-trouble started. He paused a moment to glare back at Jett, the green light from the exit sign reflecting on his face.

With the korrigan gone, Jett relaxed into the next song, which was a rock ballad that had the crowd swaying back and forth, lighters and cellphones held high like worshipping fireflies. The
blas na haislinge
had softened some since Pogswoth's departure. Jina had been worried about him, and it had added a sourness to her toradh that Jett did not miss now that it was gone.

Jina set down the guitar for this piece and sang accompanied only by the drums and bass. With her leg wrapped around the mic stand, she hugged the mic close to her mouth, her hair partially pulled back, hanging in moist blonde strands around her glittering face, light glinting now and then off her nose ring. The lighting changed color, bathing Jina in red, then purple, then blue, then white, like an angel. She closed her eyes, enraptured, then opened them and looked up at the lights that sparkled on her red lipstick.

She hardly knew this girl, Jina, and already she struggled to keep the tide in the ocean where it belonged. It was one thing to drink toradh in quantity, and another to taste too intimately. The dreamtide could lap at her feet, but if she did not root herself firmly and build an unyielding breakwater to surround her coast, a strong wave could sweep her out to sea, where she would become one and the same with the desires of Jina's aisling. Everything that defined her elven soul would be at risk of changing, at the mercy of Jina's every whim.

It was her special weakness, and it had led to her ruin more than once.

Once, she had let herself be consumed by the love of a Galway man, and lost herself to him for a hundred years until he died of old age. Without a blaosc, she became shapeless, shifting to whatever form his meandering dreams demanded of her. He was meant to be her thrall; instead, she was enslaved by him. And he knew it.

Blathin could have had the same power over Jett, but she never chose to use it. Perhaps she never even knew it was hers.

Now she had ways to protect herself. She needed only keep this dreamtide at bay until she could enthrall Jina properly.