Summer (11 page)

“I like bridges,” he said. “Fantastic examples of
mortal
ingenuity.”

“More iron,” Hannah spat from beneath her baseball cap.

“It connects with Gloucester on the other side of the river,” Willa said, ignoring the changeling. “The cave is this way. Best hurry before the crowds come out for the afternoon, don’t you think?”

She strode out along the beach with more energy than Summer expected. Brother Dan left off staring at the bridge and followed, grabbing Lolo by the collar of his jacket and dragging him away from the corpse of a smelly, bird-eaten crab. Barker followed more slowly so Summer was able to catch him up.

“What will happen?” she asked, mouth suddenly dry. “In the cave?”

She’d forgotten how tall he could seem when he wanted to look intimidating.

He quirked an eyebrow, red against dark skin.

“
I don’t have all the answers, Samhradh.”

“Papa thought you did.”

Barker’s lips twisted into a strange expression. Summer wasn’t sure whether it was grief or disgust.

“Your father was wrong.”

“It wasn’t your fault.”

Barker walked for a while without responding. Summer noticed his feet were touching earth again. His boots left indents in the sand. He seemed stronger, more energetic. She wondered if he was finally regaining his strength. She edged closer until their arms bumped, wanting the steady reassurance of his companionship.

“Really,” she said. “It wasn’t. Mama doesn’t blame you. I don’t blame you. Papa wouldn’t blame you, either. You’ve served our family long and well,” she continued, repeating something she’d heard Morris say at Papa’s wake, “you couldn’t have done any better.”

Barker didn’t make a sound when he sighed, but his shoulders moved up and down. Summer linked her fingers around his wrist. Barker didn’t protest. They crunched over the sand together. Behind them Lolo teased Hannah rudely about the
sidhe
and running water. Brother Dan drifted past, long legs eating up the dunes without effort. When the friar pulled up alongside Willa, he bent and spoke into her ear. Willa laughed, a real laugh, the first sound of happiness Summer had heard the woman make.

“That one
,” Barker whispered in Summer’s skull, meaning Daniel, “
I don’t trust. Himself would say the man stinks of Adam and the angels.”

“But there aren’t really any such thing as angels,” Summer said wistfully, thinking of the giant Christmas tree put up in Rockefeller Center every December, and of the crystalline angels trumpeting below.

“Not for centuries, anyway,” Barker agreed out loud, low as the wind off the river. “You’re not thinking it was mankind’s canny brain taught the abomination around your neck to eat our people?”

Summer pulled her fingers from Barker’s wrist and clenched them around the pendant at her throat.

If Brother Daniel heard Barker’s comment, he didn’t give any sign.

Willa led them around a swell in the beach then off the sand onto winter-brown grass. A weathered timber fence ran parallel to the strip of vegetation, butting up against a sandy cliff overgrown with tree and vine. The vine was dormant, dull as the winter grass, but a few stunted evergreen trees managed to brighten the dreary scene.

The cliff was weathered and carved by human hands. Five small niches were cut high on the wall, above even Barker’s head. Someone had long ago squared off the cave entrance; more recently someone else had installed a black-barred gate to keep curious visitors out. The gate was locked. When Lolo hung on the bars and rattled the door, it refused to give.

“In the ’60s and ’70s the cave was a popular lovers’ retreat,” Willa explained. “Trash piled up; it was a horrible insult to our town. Darlene helped fund the drive for the gate. Now it’s locked except during regular tour hours, and the local young people mostly find it dull.”

Summer couldn’t help but agree. She thought the worn sandstone wall and the dead vine looked depressing, and had to suppress a sudden shiver.

“Barker will have to magic us in,” Lolo said, shaking the bars until sand fell in a tiny waterfall from above. “This is righteous solid.”

Willa smiled fondly.

“Not necessary,” she said. “My daughter led the tours for many years. I still have her key. Hannah?”

Head bowed beneath the brim of her hat, Hannah dug obediently into Willa’s coat pocket. The changeling was thin and pale against her more compact grandmother. Summer wondered how anyone had ever mistaken the other girl for a human. Hannah pulled a lanyard from Willa’s pocket: braided leather in brown and red and black. An unremarkable key hung on a ring knotted to one end.

Hannah slid the key into the lock. It stuck but Hannah was inhumanly strong. The girl wiggled and prodded until the tumblers clicked open.

“This is as far as I go,” Willa said. “I haven’t set foot past the gate in more than a decade. It’s an unlucky place, and I don’t plan to make an exception now.”

Summer was sure she saw a ripple of hatred turn the changeling’s pretty face ugly. Then the expression was gone, quick as it had come, and Hannah’s stare was bland. Still, Summer was reminded of the old, wily crocodile kept on hand in the Central Park Zoo. When Barker shifted uneasily on the dead grass at Summer’s side, she thought he’d glimpsed it too.

“Go home, old woman,” Hannah said. “We don’t need you.” She let the key on the lanyard slide through her long fingers onto the ground, then used the heel of her shoe to grind it into the soil where Willa with her ruined fingers would find its retrieval painful, if not impossible.

Mortified, Summer bent to retrieve the key. Hannah hissed. Summer smelled ash and smoke and when she glanced up, mid-grasp, Hannah’s eyes were bright with anger. Tiny white sparks smoked at the tips of the girl’s fingers. Her lips stretched, feral.

“Don’t,” Hannah warned.

Winter would have set Hannah on her butt, knocked her over with a flick of his wrist. Winter wouldn’t stutter in fright and retreat, leaving the key in the dirt. Summer backed away, hating herself as she did so.

“Your brother’s spent half his life fighting ghouls,” Brother Dan said. He stood at ease behind Summer, spoke quietly over her shoulder. “If you think he didn’t turn and run the first time he encountered a monster, you’d be wrong.”

Summer forced her shoulders to relax. She watched as Barker picked the lanyard from the dirt and secured the key in Willa’s pocket. Hannah hissed again, edging away from Barker and his glare. The sparks on her fingers snuffed out.

“Mama was the first monster Winter saw,” Summer said, feeling the twist of sadness in her stomach that always accompanied that remembrance. “He didn’t run away, but he did cry.”

“Tears are nothing to be ashamed of.” Brother Daniel put his hand on Summer’s shoulder. Together they joined Barker and Willa at the gate.

“It’s not a large space,” Willa said, already turning away from the cliffs. “Don’t let it fool you. Fairy tricks.”

“Mortal failing,” Hannah retorted, spiteful. “Simple minds, easily manipulated.”

Willa looked once at the changeling, long and hard.

“Be careful, girl,” she warned. “Whatever awaits you on the other side...” She shook her head, gray strands of hair sticking to her cheek. “Well, it’s never quite what one expects, is it?”

“Fairyland?” Lolo asked eagerly, still hanging halfway up the gate.

“Life,” Willa said. She crossed herself once, nodded to Barker and Summer and Brother Dan, then turned and started back
down the beach, head and shoulders rolled forward against the wind and spray.

Summer was afraid to look at Hannah, so
she
frowned at the friar instead.

“She made the sign of the cross. Does she think her mortal god will protect us...or her?”

“It’s habit,” Barker said. “Like touching a tree for luck, or picking up a shiny penny. Superstition.”

“Like fearing iron,” Brother Dan said. “Dreading the acquisition of a soul. Superstition.”

Barker scowled. Brother Dan smiled back. Barker grunted, turned away, and pulled the gate open. The vertical bars left grooves in the sand but the gate moved outward without sticking. Lolo hopped off the bars and onto the beach, shifting from foot to foot in anticipation. Summer didn’t feel eager at all.

“Make some light,” she said to Barker. “It looks dark.”

“No, it doesn’t.” Lolo was already forging ahead. “It’s barely dim at all. And the old broad’s right. It’s
small
.
”
Still, he managed to disappear completely inside.

“Lorenzo,” Brother Dan called after, chastising.

“Sorry. The old
mujer
.
”
Lolo’s laughter echoed on sandstone. He sounded far away already, down a deep hole or across deep water, although that couldn’t possibly be.

Summer shivered.

Brother Dan had to duck to pass into the cliff. Hannah hurried after. Summer wondered what the other girl was expecting to find.

“Bees the size of baseballs,”
Summer had promised Lolo,
“and flowers all the colors of the rainbow, and garnets in the trees.”

But what if that wasn’t quite right?

“Barker.” Summer turned to Papa’s old friend, clutched the edge of his leather coat. She wouldn’t beg like a spoiled brat, but she couldn’t help asking one more time. “Just a little ways in? It’s not dark.”

He sighed and shook his red head, and wouldn’t meet her hopeful stare.

“Samhradh
, it’s not the shadows. There are things here, on this side—”

“I know,” she assured him quickly, biting down on her tongue to keep tears back. “Mama needs you. I
know
. But just walk me in? I’m afraid.” She whispered the last word, staring at the toe of her sensible shoes, scuffing at the sand.
Buairt
felt heavy on the chain around her neck, but not as heavy as her heart. Her heart was a rock behind her ribs, pressing her lungs into large gasping butterflies.

“Summer.”

That surprised her into looking up again, because Barker never used her everyday name. She didn’t even know the
sidhe
version of his. But when she tilted her chin at the sky he must have seen something unusual on her face, even though she was trying very hard to keep her mouth still, because he sighed again, a long, angry puff of air, and then nodded.

“Just in,” he said. He took her hand properly, squeezed her fingers. “Just in, but then you have to do the rest. Alright?”

“Aye,” Summer promised, in the old way, and that made him almost smile.

Fingers linked, together they followed Lolo’s laughter off the white sand beach and into the cliff.

The aluminum can abruptly switched directions and rolled across concrete, onto grass, then uphill toward the Chess and Checkers House. Siobahn arched her brows.

“Morris?”

“It’s playing a game, m’lady. That’s all.”

Siobahn wasn’t so sure. Nightingale, by its very nature, was unlikely to play games with royal blood. It was a very well trained toy, tuned to the kings and queens of Court by the very same wrights who kept the Progress running.

Nightingale could show a bit of temper and had done so on numerous occasions, but by all accounts it shouldn’t be able to flagrantly disregard a royal summons.

Mayhap she hadn’t made her wishes clear. Mayhap Nightingale had forgotten. Mayhap the creature was finally driven mad by too much time spent in the mortal realm.

But Siobahn didn’t think so. It was too exquisitely engineered to fail under even the most unbearable of circumstances.

The Coke can jumped into the air, singing against rock and tree trunk, against the brick of the chess house, and then up onto the roof. It spun on the roof tiles. Siobahn thought she heard fairy pipes beneath the clatter, a ballad she remembered from childhood, a war time dirge.

“Stop,” she ordered in the same tones she’d used earlier to request tea: polite, quiet, firm. “Enough.”

Bran had his laughable pistol pointed at the spinning can on the roof. Morris’ softly glowing bubble protected Siobahn from falling snow or unlooked-for harm.

“You have my coin, or you wouldn’t be here,” Siobahn said to the empty chess house. The building was a smaller version of the carousel: brick, six-sided, and steepled. The benches and tables behind were empty, encased in a layer of snow.

“Show yourself, singer.”

If her clipped command wasn’t enough to cow the creature, the lineage in her blood should be. Siobahn yanked off her gloves, set a sharp tooth to the meat of her thumb.

“No need, Lady. The binding in your veins is potent even without breaking flesh.”

Brain’s aim shifted down from the roof and over to a shadow against the nearest brick arch. Morris murmured and the barrier around Siobahn doubled, took on a white sheen.

“Stay back,” Siobahn told Bran as the shadow began to solidify and spread. “Don’t let it touch you.”

The human’s mouth curled without humor. “Thanks for the warning.”

Bran backed up until he stood alongside Morris. Siobahn stepped forward, imperious. The music in the wind and stone stilled, breath held. Metal chimed as Siobahn’s gold
sidhe
coin rolled back along the path, spinning when it hit the barrier of her shoe.

She snatched the coin up. It was cold in her hand, colder even than the snow, chill as the grief around her heart.

“My condolences,” the Nightingale said. “He was a good man, Malachi.”

Bran made a rough sound, clearing disgust or disbelief from the back of his throat. Nightingale glanced at Bran, across Morris, and back to Siobahn. The perfect bow of its mouth stretched into amusement; mundane brown eyes—human eyes, once—grew wide and round in a rusty mimicry of surprise.

“You’ve brought witnesses,” it complained. “Are you quite sure that’s wise?”

Shadows against the building pulled away from the brick, following Nightingale as it limped toward Siobahn, a stretch of black mist coalescing in muddy puddles around the creature’s feet, crawling up across pale toes, vining up under loose trousers and disappearing, only to burst forth again beneath the white flesh of bare torso and arms, then diving deep between ribs and beneath clavicle.

“Holy Hell.” Bran licked his lips. “What the fuck is that? Electrical wire?”

Siobahn ignored Bran, but Nightingale wasn’t as well mannered. It took another step forward and where the roiling shadows in its wake dripped off concrete and touched grass, dormant blades smoked and died.

“Close enough,” it said, thoughtful stare resting on Bran’s bruised skull. “Catastrophic weaponry is not exclusive to humankind.” Unbelievably, its smile grew even wider. “
Pray tell me, sir, whose dog are you? Nay, wait. Let me guess.” It lifted hands and wiggled fingers; black filament webbed those fingers knuckle to knuckle, and ran back under the parchment-thin flesh at the base of the creature’s wrists. Nightingale inhaled deeply, pointed tongue protruding between pink lips. “You’ve the pretender’s scent about you, friend, but your loyalty is divided. Best be careful.”

“Enough!” Morris ordered. “Or have you forgotten your place?”

The pointed tongue disappeared on a tiny inhale. Nightingale bowed its head in exaggerated submission then dropped to its knees, kneeling in a puddle of shifting black. It was so thin Siobahn could count its ribs, and see the knots in its shoulder blades where Angus had broken an already crooked human skeleton and crafted it back together, entirely changed, for the pleasure and protection of the Court.

Brown eyes watched Siobahn through a mop of tangled curls.

“I am yours,” it said, simple and true. “If I wasn’t always, I will always be.”

Siobahn felt a twitch of pity. She squashed it ruthlessly away. “I do not require you to be clever,” she rebuked. “Only useful in war.”

It shrugged, resigned, waiting, shedding dark miasma on either side, and where that stain brushed, life smoked away.

“My husband saw little need for you in this world,” Siobahn said, more for Bran’s benefit than Nightingale’s. “Despite all appearances, Malachi was a soft-hearted man, determined to save every one of our people, deserving or otherwise. I’m less sentimental, of a more practical mind.” She turned on her heel, setting her back to the Angus’ monster, and met Bran’s watchful stare over the barrel of his gun. She could feel Nightingale’s gaze between her shoulder blades. She clenched her fists to suppress a shudder. “Tell Katherine Grey this: Malachi is gone; I am no longer tempered by his grace. I’ve no patience for pretenders-to-the-throne, not in
Tir na Nog
, and not on Manhattan. She’s to stop fomenting rebellion, or I’ll put her down exactly as she deserves.”

Siobahn had to give the human credit for courage; he stood firm in the wake of her threat. Her son had chosen well, taking the detective for a friend. Winter wouldn’t forgive her if Bran fell in her squabble with Katherine. But Siobahn had never concerned herself with collateral damage and she’d long ago given up her son’s goodwill.

Yet—

“A demonstration,” she decided. “Watch carefully, Detective Healy, and take what you see in detail back to your lover. Convince her to bend the knee.”

Siobahn turned back halfway, tipped her head in permission. Nightingale smiled, sweet as the child-man it had been when it had first been stolen from Whitehill House. Pointed tongue licking restlessly across pink lips, it lifted one long finger, black filaments flexing, bent and pressed the very tip to the dormant grass at the edge of the walk.

Immediately the grass wilted, withered to ash, and dissolved. The tiny destruction spread from one blade to the next, swelling from a blotch to a puddle to a creeping pond. Small shrubs blackened and crumbled. A lone maple burst into a cloud of white ember; ash snowed over the blackened hillock, and where the ash touched, blight spread, a conflagration without flame or heat.

“Malachi compared it to atomic disintegration,” Siobahn said, cold. “I’ve never cared much for human sciences, so long as
sidhe
magic serves. My father used to call it ’poison shadow.’ Everything living falls beneath the taint.
Everything living,
Detective Healy.”

“Okay, right,” Bran said, watching as the black death raced behind the Chess and Checkers House. “You’ve made your point, flexed your fucking muscles, Siobahn. Stop it now.”

Siobahn smiled prettily. She watched the roll of destruction, distantly pleased. In truth, she’d forgotten the taste of obliteration; a heady rush of gratification made her pulse pound again after days of suffering ice in her veins.

“Could you call Hiroshima back?” she asked, gently. “My Nightingale is a weapon, not a game. Once deployed, I’ve no rein on the results.”

Bran was too well trained to let horror mark his expression, but he wasn’t entirely impassive. Siobahn noted the flexing of his jaw, and the flush of blood along the stitched seam in his skull.

“There are children—” He stopped, and cleared his throat. “There are people on the other side of the hill, Siobahn. Families on the grass.”

Families on the grass.
Siobahn remembered Winter and Summer playing in the park, catching snowflakes on their tongues and eyelashes. She shook her head, chasing the old sentiment away.

She allowed her eyes to widen, gave the detective the full force of her disdain.

“What’s a point made unless it etches the heart?” she asked, gently. “Bring your naive horror back to Katherine Grey, Detective, and remind her I’ve little left to lose.”

Bran turned and ran. Siobahn saw the moment the human almost put his foot into the dark stain. He recalled himself just in time, foot hovering an inch above the ground, then dodged his own death and sprinted along the concrete path instead. A safer choice, but far too indirect. Olmsted and Vaux’s rolling park was meant for gentle rambling and not urban warfare.

“He’s too late,” Nightingale said without inflection. It watched Bran disappear behind the blackened hill.

“Hope springs eternal,” Siobahn returned, mocking.

Nightingale bowed. “So it does.”

“M’lady,” Morris interrupted. His protective bubble continued to pulse around Siobahn, his concentration unshaken. “If I may ask, what now?”

“Now we return home,” Siobahn said. She heard the distant wail of sirens. Someone mortal had phoned for help. “Dispel your Cant, Morris. I’m in no danger. This particular tool is tuned to royal blood.”

“My lady,” Morris protested, swallowing hard. “I haven’t your confidence. Even the finest sword cuts both ways.”

Siobahn squashed a twitch of impatience. She hadn’t time for fools. But Morris was like a wolf puppy, so eager to test his growing fangs.

“Bind it if you like,” she allowed, because it was easier than arguing, and she could see the flash of blue and red lanterns over the hill. “But not on my account. Nightingale is loyal to my desires as my own beating heart. Am I not correct?”

Nightingale bowed again, meeting Siobahn’s stare, ignoring the loop of blue fire Morris conjured around its wrists: fairy manacles.

“I am ever at your disposal,” replied the monster. It smiled, gathering black miasma about its heels and shoulders like a cloak. “Lead on, Majesty. I’m eager for a proper home.”

Nightingale made itself comfortable in Malachi’s study. Siobahn stood on the threshold and watched as the creature wandered her husband’s bookshelves, scraping a long finger across stamped spines, stopping here and there to examine one of Malachi’s small keepsakes or a framed photo.

She’d given Bran Healy a fine fright and she hoped he’d take his horror back with him to Katherine’s bosom. The truth of Nightingale was somewhat less terrifying, if only one realized that Angus’ living weapon was a finely crafted work of art, perfectly capable ofkeeping its destructive abilities contained. Central Park had survived Nightingale’s presence for centuries, just as tourists and bustling natives had survived its walk down 64
th
street and through the hotel lobby.

“I’ve had a wee bit of practice,” it said now, reading Siobahn’s face rather than her private thoughts. “Living amongst mortals. Not one sparrow falls to my touch that I don’t take time to grieve.” Its lush mouth twisted into a toothy, pink-tongued grin.

Siobahn wasn’t amused. “Stay here until I’ve need for you.” She paused, struck by sudden uncomfortable doubt. “Do you require sustenance?” She couldn’t recall and the realization made her shift uneasily on the edge of Malachi’s study.

Its skeletal hands paused, hovered in front of a book-laden shelf, then gently plucked a framed portrait from its place between spines. Nightingale brushed away a thin layer of dust. Summer and Winter looked back at it through the glass, young faces frozen in time. Nightingale studied the photo thoughtfully, a faint frown settling above human eyes.

“Tea,” it said after a moment. “Good English tea. It’s been a very long time since I’ve tasted English tea. Also, music. Any sort of music. I’m not picky. A pen and paper with which to scribe.”

Siobahn almost bowed. She stopped herself just in time.

“As you wish, Nightingale. I’ll have Morris see to it.”

She turned away, then hesitated, reluctant to lock her latest triumph away. Katherine Grey, she thought, should be cowering by now in her Central Park lair, rethinking her rebellion.

“My father called you by your given name,” she said as another old memory teased. “When I was a child. You sang whilst he played
fidchell
in the garden, and recited the old ballads, and he called you…” She pursed her lips, narrowed her eyes, tried to recall.
After
, Malachi had always called it only by its title, but Malachi had always been plagued by superstition. But,
before
—

“Alexander.” It gave the photograph of her children one final dusting, then set it back in place on the bookshelf. Black mist swirled between Nightingale’s bare toes as it wandered on, insubstantial black fog wrapped like a cloak across its shoulders. “Alex, if he was pleased. But I’ve learned to prefer the title earned at Court, Majesty. Nightingale will do.”