Roadside Magic (20 page)

T
he redheaded girl spat at the Queen of Seelie, launched herself . . . and vanished into the high-arched, narrow black mouth of the tower. Its dull sides brightened slightly, and Crenn stared.

Why did she do that?

The tower shuddered, and the aperture slammed itself shut. Smooth and seamless-white, it rose, and the glitter at its top turned blood-red.

Summer’s face twisted. Even enraged, she was beautiful, but Crenn took a step back. That paleness, slim and enticing, was clotted cream, and his gorge rose for a brief pointless moment. No man could look at Summer and stay unmoved, true. Maybe it was just that he’d spent so long without any female attention at all—his entire body tightened, the swelling where a man felt everything first before the brain kicked in eating at his belly.

Summer laughed, her face smoothing into a young girl’s, altering seamlessly. A warm wind rose, mouthing the tower’s rough bisque.

“Silly girl.” The Seelie Queen glided away from the steps. Her step was light as a leaf, and the appleblossom reek on the
wind intensified as she drifted closer. “And you, huntsman. Questioning me.”

She’s here alone. Without guards.
He was armed, too. The thought vanished in a red flash, but she probably heard it anyway.

“Still, I promised you.” Ever closer, a playful breeze, but his sensitive hunter’s nose caught a whiff of something foul.
What
is
that? And why is she glamouring so hard?

She was very close now. Close enough to dizzy a man. The blossom-scent filled his nose, made his eyes water.

“You did well,” she whispered. Her breath touched his hair—when had he closed his eyes? The tower was still glowing behind his eyelids. What was in there?

The Ragged, sleeping, her face pale and peaceful. Her fierce loyalty.
He saved my life
, she’d said, her expression softening ever so little. Facing down Unwinter himself, and spitting in Summer’s face to boot. A woman like that could make a man immortal, or so close he couldn’t tell the difference.

A woman like that was worth . . .

It was deathly silent except for the Dreaming Sea’s endless song. Sweat greased him, and he was suddenly aware that his breeches were too tight, he smelled of the salt of mortal sweat and Marrowdowne fens as well as exhaust and cold iron. There was a rotting reek wafting from Summer’s robe, and he stepped back before he could help it, his bootheel catching a stray thornvine and grinding, sharply. Crushed, it oozed heavy, sticky sap, and the vines shifted against one another with creaking, cracking groans.

Summer stood very still. “Afraid of a woman? And I was told you were
brave
.”

“I did what you asked.” What was that smell? He’d never
come across its like in Seelie before, not even in the deepest, greenest bits of Marrowdowne where the bones of giant beasts submerged in the peat bogs and the spongy masses could drag even a kelpie or a lightfoot pondrunner down in moments.

They were ancient, the choke-thick hummocks of moss-hung Marrowdowne, and
hungry
.

“I did not
ask
, Alastair Crenn.” A glacial cold in Summer’s tone, now. One soft white hand reached out, touched his shoulder, then bit, cruelly. Her nails were claws now, sliding through his shirt and jerkin, pricking at skin underneath. “I am
Summer
.”

Crenn screamed. Fire roared through him, as if the pitch had been set alight again. He fell, tangling in the thornvines, which hissed and blackened as Summer crooned in the Old Language. Chantment ran spiked rowels under his skin, and he thrashed among the hissing, cringing vines. Thorns striped him, only pinpricking their warnings; Summer laughed, a tiger’s low, coughing growl, and they were blasted away from his struggling form, curling and shriveling.

She took her time, grinding the pain in. When she finally released him, her laughter was just as chill, and just as merry as ever. She surveyed his supine form with gleaming black eyes.

“Come to Court soon, Crenn; for I shall wish to see what I will have wrought.”

He lay, panting and wrung-wet with sweat, and listened to her soft footsteps recede. She was singing, in a lovely lilting nymph’s voice. It was part of Belgasson’s Lay, when his lover Andariel was shut in a blackstone tower at the edge of Unwinter, and died of longing before he could return from the last of the Sundering Wars to free her.

“
Oh beauty’s pain, and pain is pain, and nothing else will do;
For all the world’s a trap, my love, without the thought of you . . .”
A jingle, a jangle, and Summer was gone, taking the hideous scent under her appleblossom perfume with her.

God
. He twitched, weak as a kitten. The vines cringed, tasting her displeasure.

It took two tries for Crenn to get to hands and knees. The scars burned, but when he scrubbed at his face with dirty hands, he felt only smooth skin. His shoulders were no longer ridged with thickened tissue, and he felt under his shirt. No trace of the horrific burning remained, and the pain was already receding.

He retched, dry, coughing heaves turning him inside out. Crawled across blackened stone, his skin moving fluidly, sweetly, the hitching of scarring gone. His nose was no longer a ruin and his cheeks were soft again, though he could feel a stubble-rasp he’d forgotten.

The burns had not grown hair.

Three steps before the tower. They were cold; he snatched his hands back, pushed himself upright. His knees threatened to give. He felt the chillscorch through his boots as he stepped thrice up, nervously.

The tower swayed, gently. Deathly silent, except for the billowing of the Dreaming Sea.

He spread his hands against the stone. It throbbed a little, uneasily, as if the entire edifice was a harpstring plucked by the salt wind.

The door’s vanished. God. Jesus Christ, God forgive me.

What have I done?

S
tairs. She climbed, and climbed, occasionally passing slits in the tower’s wall, just wide enough to peer out and take a sip of fresh air. All in all, it was dank, and cobwebbed, and slightly musty, but not so bad.

A Half in Summer wouldn’t starve. She might grow attenuated, true, and solitary confinement could waste one away. It was, Robin thought, hacking and spitting again, nice to have nobody to worry about. No need to guard her expression, or keep her thoughts hidden. She’d never lived alone—first there was Mama, and then Daddy Snowe and Daisy, and then Court. Summerhome was always bustling, and the rhythm of Court life didn’t permit much solitude.

This might not be so bad
. Unless the whole thing was stairs. She was heartily tired of stairs. What else was there to do but go up?

Once the shusweed wore off, she could use her voice. There was little the song couldn’t destroy. Summer had to have known that and accounted for as much, so Robin would have to be careful. She would have to—

The end came as a surprise. The last stair gave onto a small
antechamber, and there was a wooden door, just slightly open. Rich golden light outlined it, made a wedge on the dusty floor. Possibly electric—but it couldn’t be; this was
Summer
.

Whatever’s in there is likely to be nasty.

It startled her into a harsh wheeze that might have been a laugh if she hadn’t been numbed by shusweed. Nothing mattered in the slightest anymore. Everything Robin made the mistake of caring for withered. She was poison, and at least here in the tower she couldn’t harm anyone else.

Summer had probably done her a favor.

Another wheeze. Robin wiped at her cheeks, surprised to find she was not weeping. Even the anger was gone, cold ashes.

She approached the door, cautiously, step by step. Her calves burned, though her shoes were just as light as ever.
If I never see another stair again, it’ll be too soon
. She peered around it, squinting against the brightness.

A small round room, prosaic and wood-floored. There was a fire burning in a granite hearth, and the light was multiplied by the shining walls. Small chips of glass, perhaps? The dancing flames illuminated those sparkling tiles, and Robin stepped forward, dimly aware the door was swinging open on its own. Everything behind her receded, and when she glanced back, the stairs and the platform were gone. Instead, a solid sheet of mirror watched her, water-clear, showing a Robin repeated into infinity.

Bedraggled in torn black velvet, her hair tangle-tumbled and her cheeks chapped, her mouth half ajar as if she were moontouched or halfwit, her pupils pinpricks and . . .

Oh God. God. No
.

Behind her, a misty shape. It solidified, and Robin stared.
It’s not possible. Not possible. Just glamour. It’s not real.

It was a redheaded woman older than Robin’s apparent age,
her features a softer, blurred copy of Robin’s own. She wore sensible shoes, a neatly hemmed blue dress, and she was covered with bright mortal blood. Tiny stars of safety glass winked in her hair, longer than Robin’s and with less curl. Some of her teeth had been knocked out.

Of course, Daisy had died in a car accident. Puck had pixie-led her car, and . . .

“
Robin,
” the Daisy-phantom said, lisping a little as her tongue brushed against where teeth should be with soft sliding noises. “
It’s so good to see you
.”

More gossamer shapes began to solidify. Robin backed up, frantic, her hands stretched behind her, searching for the surface of the mirror, to put her back against it. The gleaming tiles had grown together seamlessly; there was no corner to retreat to.

Nothing, just cool air, no matter how quickly she moved. Her own horrified expression, repeated over and over, and there was Mama wasted away by the cancer, leaning on an IV pole, her stentorious machine-assisted breathing a death-knight’s bellows. A young golden-blond boy, his skin studded and scarred with amber slivers, reaching toward her with fingers that dropped heavy, resinous, tinkling shards. “
Robin-mama!
” he piped. “
You’ve come back!
”

She could only make harsh cawing sounds. The shusweed was wearing off, but too slowly.

A darker shadow loomed behind her. She whirled, and the short mortal man with slicked-back gingery hair smiled, a looped leather belt cracking as he jerked his fists apart. “
Now look at this,
” he said, and it was Daddy Snowe’s sneering, booming voice, so deep for such a little man. He wore his workboots, and they clopped on the faded linoleum as he stalked toward her. “
Look who’s come home to visit.
”

Robin blundered away. The screams stopped in her throat, her heart racing; she tripped and fell headlong. It was the floor of the trailer in Seneida again, staring at the gleaming lino under the dinette table as Daddy Snowe’s boots thudded behind her. She’d washed every inch of the floor, but he always found a streak, and when he did—

“
Home at last,
” they chorused, and little tinkling bits of amber and glass fell as Daisy and Sean crowded close. “
You’re back, Robin. Back where you belong
.”

Daddy Snowe’s belt cracked again, leather snapping against itself.

T
here was the fire-ground, where he could not walk for long, and she told him to leave her. Hunt and hide, she said, and her word was law . . . but still, he lingered. It was not right. He smelled danger, and treachery, and could not express it. The sun sank, and he slunk about the edges of the fire-ground.

Then
they
came, dangerous ones he had fought off before, reeking of spice-ice and cinders, with their hounds very like him but so cold, so cold. The ground shook, and Pepperbuckle curled into a holly-bush against the stone wall, trembling, his flanks dark with sweat. Her last despairing cry tore through him, and an invisible cord stretched almost to the snapping point.

When the moon rose he burst from the holly, its leaves combing his fine coat, and pierced a fine gossamer Veil. Instinct turned him topsy-turvy; he spilled into a balmy evening full of dangerous, delightful scents. Nose to the ground, the hound ran, coursing along Summer’s green hills, following a maddening, faint, flaring trail—for his mistress-mother was elsewhere, in a realm he could not enter, though he could step through the gossamer into others lying just a few degrees
off
, fanned atop one another, rubbing through and echoing, shifting in dreamy succession. The
darker ones, with their cinders and bone-white flashes, the crimson touches, he stayed well away from—but if
she
had gone there, he would follow.

A long time passed as he ran, hoping to catch a scent, following that tenuous cord. Through sunshine and dusk, time shifting as the sideways realms did, stepping through mortal shadows to avoid larger beasts that might slow him, resting often under bushes or tucked in safe, dozy hollows . . .

Suddenly, the cord-chord was plucked. It resounded all through him, and Pepperbuckle halted, head upflung, lips skinning back from sharp ivory teeth, damp nose lifted and flaring, his fine tail—dragging for quite some time now—perking, then twitching, then wagging furiously.

He turned, needle-north, and the wind that reached him smelled of salt and stone, and a faint breath of
her
.

The hound danced for joy, his padded feet kicking up fragrant dry leaves. He set off, any shadow of weariness or hunger forgotten. In the distance a spur of stone rose from the cliffs, glowing dull-white except for the top, where a diamond of bloody light bloomed.

Pepperbuckle ran.