Late Eclipses (28 page)

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Authors: Seanan McGuire

BOOK: Late Eclipses
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I pulled up beside him and killed the engine. He didn’t look up. I glanced to May. “Okay. That’s a good spell.”
Even May looked impressed. “I didn’t realize it was
that
good.”
“Well, drop it. We need to talk to him.”
“Right.” She clapped her hands, bobbing her head a la Barbara Eden. The spell burst like a soap bubble, leaving us visible to anyone who was looking.
Like Walther. He jumped, nearly dropping the vial as he whipped around to face us. “Toby!”
“It’s me,” I said, sliding out of the car. May followed. I gestured between them, saying, “May, Walther Davies. Walther, May Daye, my—”
“Your roommate. You said. A pleasure to meet you, Ms. Daye.” May looked surprised but pleased as Walther tucked the vial into his pocket, turning his attention back to me. “I only got here a few minutes ago. Did you drive the whole way invisible?”
“Yeah, we did. It’s faster. Sort of.” I took Spike from May, holding it toward Walther. “This is Spike.”
“The rose goblin? Marcia mentioned things might get odd around you.” I gave him a quizzical look. He shrugged. “I asked her to fill me in on what to expect when I started working with you.” Quickly, he added, “You were right; it doesn’t look healthy.”
I decided to let Walther’s digging into my background slide. I would have done the same thing in his shoes. “It was fine until Luna got sick.”
“May I . . . ?” He reached for the goblin.
“Be my guest.” I passed Spike to him, wincing as I saw how shallowly it was breathing. I wasn’t sure it actually needed to breathe—it was as much plant as animal—but that didn’t mean good things would happen if it stopped. May settled beside me, shifting her weight uneasily from foot to foot. I put a hand on her shoulder, and waited.
Walther cradled Spike against his chest, listening to its breathing before putting a finger on its throat to test its pulse. Finally, he said, “This is a very sick goblin.”
“We know. That’s why I want you to take soil samples here.”
“Because of the connection between the Duchess and the goblins?”
I nodded.
To my surprise, he chuckled grimly as he passed Spike to May. “Faerie never fails to stay interesting, does it?”
“Like a Chinese curse,” I said. “Let’s go find some roses.”
We didn’t have to look for long. The bush was half-dead, its few surviving flowers liberally mottled with brown. I stopped. “Here’s one.”
“Got it.” Walther pulled a spoon out of his pocket and knelt to dig around the roots of the bush. He stopped after only a few seconds, frowning. “That’s not right.”
“What isn’t?” May asked.
“The texture of this soil is all wrong.” He pulled a small jar from his coat pocket, dumping a spoonful of dirt inside. Then he uncapped the vial he’d been studying when we arrived, pouring its pale red contents into the jar. The resulting mixture fizzed and turned clear. Walther’s frown deepened.
“I don’t like that look,” I said. “What’s wrong?”
“There’s no poison here. Something’s still not right.” Walther waved his hand over the jar, muttering in Welsh. The liquid turned gold and started fizzing again.
“He’s weird,” said May. “If he pulls out a Bunsen burner, we’re leaving.”
I bit back a smile. If she was feeling well enough to be snide, we were doing better than I’d thought. “He’s Tylwyth Teg,” I said, like that explained everything.
Apparently it did, because May looked satisfied with that answer. Walther kept chanting as the liquid changed colors, finally settling on a glittering white.
“Ah,” said Walther, and stood.
I raised an eyebrow. “Talk to me. What’s going on?”
“Salt.” He held up the jar for my inspection.
“What do you mean, ‘salt’?” I squinted at the jar like I expected his words to start making sense. “Isn’t there always salt in dirt?”
“A little bit, but plants die if they get too much. This dirt has too much salt. Think of it as dosing a person with a little bit of arsenic at a time. It’s essentially slow murder.” He shook his head. “The only way to get rid of it is to leech it out, and the plant still might die if there’s enough damage.”
“Leech it? How?” I demanded. The implications were sinking in. The damned drink was a red herring; the salt was our real culprit. There could be another poison involved, something to knock her out once she’d been weakened, but poisoning the roses would be enough to incapacitate her.
“The soil needs to be flushed with water and treated with gypsum. Uh, that’s a mineral that pulls salt out of the ground.”
“How fast can we do that?”
“This isn’t something you can just snap your fingers and do. It takes time for the soil to recover, and that doesn’t take into account how long it’ll take the plant to get better.” He shook his head. “I might be able to speed things up, but it won’t be instantaneous. I’m a chemist, not a horticulturist.”
I shrugged. “You’re all we have.”
Walther paused. Then he held his hands out to May. “Give me the goblin.”
She glanced to me. I nodded consent, and she reluctantly handed Spike over. Walther pulled it to his chest, cradling it as he reached into his pocket for another vial.
“If this doesn’t work, there’s nothing else I can do,” he said, not looking up.
“I understand,” I said.
Prying Spike’s jaws open, Walther uncapped the vial and poured its smoky purple contents down the rose goblin’s throat. Spike went limp, and Walther began chanting in rapid Welsh.
May grabbed my arm, hissing, “What’s he
doing?
”
“Trying to save us.” I put my hand over hers. The air crackled with the scent of yarrow and the cold, bitter tang of ice as Walther’s human disguise started to waver, flickering around him like a bad special effect. That wasn’t a good sign. Everyone has their limits, and I didn’t know where Walther’s were.
I stepped forward, putting my free hand on his shoulder to steady him as his chanting took on a more frantic pace. He flashed me a grateful look, finishing his chant with a string of repeated syllables. The magic shattered, and Walther sagged into my arms.
Spike opened its eyes, making a small, bemused sound.
“Spike!” cried May, rushing to embrace the rose goblin. It chirped and scrambled onto her shoulder, holding itself in place with three paws as it started grooming the fourth.
I was occupied with keeping Walther from knocking us both over. He wasn’t a small man, and he was heavier than he looked. I wound up locking one knee and shoving, supporting him against my shoulder. “You okay in there?”
“I’m fine,” he managed, trying to stand. “Ow. My head.”
“Magic-burn. It’s not pleasant, but you get used to it.” I glanced at Spike. It looked perfectly normal. “What did you do?”
“Something I shouldn’t have?” he said, rubbing his forehead as he managed to get his feet back underneath him. “I’d rather not get used to this, if it’s all the same to you.”
“Seriously, what did you do?” If he’d cured Spike, he might be able to cure Luna.
He must have guessed what I was thinking, because he shook his head, expression grave. “I pulled the salt out of its—sap, blood, whatever—and replaced it with gypsum.”
“So you couldn’t do that for Luna,” I said, letting go of my fragile hope. Even I know that mammals need salt, and even if Luna was part-plant, she was still a mammal.
“It would kill her,” he said. “As it is, I don’t know how long this ‘fix’ will last. The salt’s still in the soil. Your goblin’s probably going to get sick again.”
“If we don’t fix this, you mean,” I said.
“If you don’t fix this, a sick rose goblin is going to be the least of your problems.”
“True enough.” Something rustled in the bushes, and two more thorny heads poked through the leaves. One had electric pink eyes; the other’s eyes were a mossy green. Rose goblins. I smiled. “Looks like your spell was more effective than you thought.”
“That explains my headache,” he said, wincing again.
“Toby gets those all the time,” said May, reaching up to pry a thorn out of her shoulder. Spike chirped, annoyed. “Usually after she does something stupid.”
“I’m not normally this dumb,” he said wryly.
May flashed a smile. “Toby inspires stupidity.”
“Hey!” I protested, not really minding. Walther got dragged into things by Lily’s death, and May was involved as long as I was; if they could relax, even a little, more power to them. “I do not. Walther, are you safe to drive?”
“I should be. I have some aspirin in the car.”
“Good. I want you to head for Golden Gate Park. Find Tybalt; give him the antitoxin and tell him what to do with it. Get things started.”
“Right.” He gave me a sidelong look. “And you?”
“I’m going to send a message to Sylvester. I’ll meet you at the Tea Gardens in a little while.” Assuming I got out of Shadowed Hills alive.
“Your wish is my command,” he said, and smiled, a trace of impish humor showing in the set of his jaw.
“Good. Let’s get moving.” Spike rode on May’s shoulder as we walked back to the parking lot, watching with interest as our train of rose goblins increased. There were more than a dozen of them following us by the time we reached Walther’s car.
“There’s something you don’t see every day,” I commented.
Walther laughed. “Maybe you would if you gardened more.” He opened the car door. I suppressed the urge to tell him to check the backseat. “See you soon?”
“Count on it.” He waved to May, then climbed into the car and drove away.
“He’s nice,” May said, lifting Spike from her shoulder and putting it on the top of my car. “Weird, but nice. And what he did for Spike, I mean, that was really cool.”
“What he did for Luna, too,” I said. “This is the best lead we’ve had in a while.” I glanced toward the top of the hill and frowned.
May followed my gaze, asking, “Is it safe to go in?”
“No, probably not.” I looked away. “I should call. See if I can get Quentin to come out. I just wish . . . ”
“I know.” May put her hand on my shoulder.
The payphone at the edge of the parking lot rang. I jumped.
May laughed, starting toward it. “It’s just a phone. Relax.”
“May—”
“It’s just a
phone
.” She picked up the receiver, still half-laughing. “May Daye here.” Then she paused, going quiet.
“May?” I called. “May, are you okay?”
She turned and held the phone toward me, expression uncertain. “It’s for you.”
TWENTY-THREE
 
 
 
T
HE SCENE WAS STARTING TO ACQUIRE A strange, dreamlike quality, like it wasn’t really happening.
I must have been poisoned again,
I thought, as I walked over and took the phone.
I wonder when that happened.
“Hello?”
“I see you found the salt,” said Oleander. “I have to admit, you’ve impressed me. I heard about your little game with Blind Michael, but I thought it must have been dumb luck. When did you learn how to think?”
I dug the nails of my free hand into my bandaged palm. The pain was almost reassuring. “I’m not going to let you get to me. And you’re not getting near Luna ever again.”
“How were you planning to stop me? It’s brave of you to rattle your spears in my direction, but you don’t know where I am. You don’t even know whether you’re really talking to me. I could just be a dial tone.”
“May heard you.”
“Who’d believe the word of a Fetch? She’ll see you dead, you know.”
“You poisoned me.”
“So I did; three times now. You check your car so carefully, but you never wipe the handles on your door.” She sounded amused. “Did your little Tylwyth Teg tell you about my work? Meddler. He won’t be helping you anymore.”
“What did you do to Walther?” May’s eyes widened. I waved her back. “I swear, if you’ve touched any more of my friends—”
“You’ll what, whine me to death? ‘Oh, poor me, I’m poisoned, my friends are dying, I’m a fish, oh, I should
die
.’ ” Her voice dropped, becoming predatory. “Don’t worry about the last part. It’s going to be arranged.”
“Oleander—”
“Is it already time for the empty threats of violence? I thought you’d go slow with me. After all, I’m going slow with you.”
“Leave us alone!” I shouted, my pent-up anger boiling to the surface. Spike yowled, thorns rattling.
Oleander laughed. “Not likely; I have unfinished business with your ‘friends’—and with
you
.” The venom in her voice answered a question I’d almost forgotten: whatever she had against me was bigger than I could have earned on my own. What Karen showed me—the dream she sent me—really happened. It was the only explanation. “You’re taking the fall for this one.”
“You’re not getting away with this.” It was a cliché, but I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

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