Summer (8 page)

“Darlene was a gardener,” Hannah said from the top step, her hand on the doorknob. “Before the human stole her. Dirty, smelly hobby. I never did see the point.”

Summer agreed, but didn’t say so out loud, mostly because Lolo was watching her knowingly.

“Shouldn’t you ring the bell?” she asked instead. A lighted doorbell gleamed against the brick, and beneath it a neat little engraved plaque: RING FOR SERVICE.

“That’s for the servants,” Hannah said, tossing dark hair over one shoulder. “Family uses a key.”

She bent gracefully and shifted a loose flagstone in the step. She used the key she found there to unlock the door and stepped over the threshold, chin held high.

“’And fair and stormy, all weather’s moods’,” Daniel murmured, following after.

Lolo was less pleased.

“Servants,” he scoffed, disgusted, as he nudged Summer up the steps. “South of the Mason-Dixon, can’t you tell? Bet this house has never heard of the Emancipation Proclamation, huh, guys?”

Neither Summer nor Barker responded. Summer thought human politics were boring. Barker, with his ebony skin and peculiar sense of justice had probably played his own small and private part in the American Civil War. But it had never really occurred to Summer that Lolo might have an opinion on anything other than television or the best way to run a con. Maybe he was finally growing up.

The back door opened into a kitchen, possibly the largest Summer had ever seen. When Hannah turned on the overhead lights, glass and silver and granite sparkled. A gigantic wooden table spread from one side of the room to the other, flanked by heavy-looking wooden chairs. A large crystal bowl filled with cut white roses graced the table’s center.

The room smelled like lemon and lilac and silver polish.

“
Hijo de puta,”
Lolo muttered. “How many people live here?”

“It’s just Grandmama and Uncle Lewis, now.” Hannah stood in front of a gleaming restaurant-sized refrigerator, blatantly surveying the room. Summer had the distinct impression the changeling was looking for something. “Plus the housekeeper. I used to have a nanny and a tutor, but I scared them away.”

“Burnt them to a crisp, probably,” Lolo said. “Winter told us all about your tricks, so don’t do anything stupid.” He shifted a little, patting Winter’s pistol through his coat.

Six months ago Summer would have laughed at Lolo’s posturing. Now she was beginning to wonder if she’d missed something important about the human boy. She’d never thought too deeply about her brother’s friends, but standing in Hannah’s fancy kitchen, surrounded by fragile glass and shine, she suddenly remembered something her papa explained just after Siobahn had sent Winter away.

“Things break,
Samhradh,”
Papa had said as he wiped away her lonely tears with the tips of his fingers, “your brother needs to learn for himself that not everything is his to fix.”

Now Papa was murdered and Winter was missing, and Richard had built a bomb and Lolo had shot Michael Smith right in the face, then admitted to running drugs, and maybe he wasn’t growing after all, but actually revealing a broken piece of himself no one could fix.

Summer touched
Buairt
on its chain around her neck, seeking reassurance. As she did, she noticed Brother Daniel watching her from his place by the bowl of white roses.

“This way,” Hannah said from the other side of the kitchen.

She took a white taper in a silver candlestick from a carved wooden sideboard and lit it with a spark from her thumb.

“Hold this,” the changeling said, passing the candle to Lolo. “Grandmama doesn’t believe in flashlights. The batteries all go dead.”

“Does she believe in light switches? Electricity?” Lolo retorted, but he took the candlestick.

“I don’t want to wake anyone. There are guest rooms upstairs. You’ll sleep there and in the morning I’ll show you the cave.”

The last was directed at Barker, who didn’t answer. Hannah glided from the room, light on her feet. Lolo followed. The taper in his hand didn’t give off much light. Brother Daniel lingered at the wooden sideboard, lighting a selection of similar tapers. He didn’t use a spark from his hand; he used a silver lighter from the pocket of his jeans.

“I thought you were supposed to keep her from burning us to ash,” Summer grumbled in Barker’s direction. “Isn’t that what the bangles are for?” She stared pointedly at the amber bracelet around his wrist.

“A single spark does not an inferno make,” Barker replied, mild.

“And how do you think a fire starts,” Daniel asked, handing a lit taper first to Summer and then to the red-headed
sidhe
, “if not from a single spark?”

Barker scowled. Summer knew he could Gather starlight and turn the entire house to daylight, but he took the candle, cupping the flame with one hand.

“It’s under control,” he said.

“God willing,” the friar replied.

Summer found Lolo behind a half open door on the second floor. The bedroom he’d chosen was huge, three times the size of Summer’s own room in The Plaza. An overhead chandelier blazed, crystal teardrops shedding rainbows. He’d switched on the two bedside lamps and the sconces in the adjoining bathroom.

The candle in its silver stick, wick black and snuffed, sat on a roll top desk against the far wall.

Summer blew out her own candle and set it on the floor.

“Hannah said no lights.”

Lolo sat cross-legged on the giant four-poster bed in the middle of the room. He had his backpack open on the coverlet and was sorting through its innards.

“Have you seen this house?” He shook his head and the beads in his hair clicked. “It’s ginormous. No one will notice, especially if you close the door. ’Sides, Hannah said her grandma and uncle sleep on the top floor. And the servants—fucking sick if you ask me—have bedrooms in the basement.  I need the lights to keep me awake, cuz I’m not gonna fry in my bed.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Summer said, pretending she hadn’t just voiced the same fear to Barker. “It’s all under control. She can’t start a fire, Barker won’t let her. Besides—” To hide her nerves, she crossed the room and sat on the edge of the bed, bouncing a little on the mattress “—I thought you liked her. Hannah, I mean?”

Lolo turned his backpack upside down and shook it. Summer watched, impressed, as a variety of knickknacks fell onto the bed. Lolo was like a magpie, attracted to shiny things, and without Winter around to scold he was more likely to pick up things that didn’t belong to him. Which wasn’t exactly a good thing, because without
Richard
nearby and running interference, Lolo could be tagged for shoplifting.

“What makes you think that?” A Red Bull dropped onto the bed. Lolo grunted in triumph, cracked the little bottle, and sucked the drink down. “She’s a crazy bitch, didn’t I say so?”

He had.

“But you were being all...solicitous...” It wasn’t really the right word, so Summer tried again. “Attentive.
Nice
.
”

Lolo grinned, cocky. “Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer. Know who said that? Sun Tzu.”

“Okay.”

The bed covers were really soft. They smelled like lavender. Summer lay down on her side. Lolo selected a pillow from the mountain against the headboard, and tossed it her way.

“Sleep, if you want. It’s late. I’ll keep an eye out.”

Summer pulled up one edge of the coverlet and snuggled under, taking the pillow with her. She nestled into the mattress and closed her eyes.

“Lolo, what do you think the cave’s like?”

The mattress shifted. She thought maybe he was grabbing another pillow.

“It’s a cave, Summer.”

“Have you ever been in a cave?”

“No,” he admitted. Then, after a silence: “It’s probably dirty and cold and wet. Like the Metro, you know. But smaller. And without the trash. And without the marks—people.”

Summer tried to imagine
dirty
and
cold
but couldn’t. She’d never been truly cold in her life, and dirty was something she avoided.

“What about the Fairy Court?” Lolo asked a while later, just as Summer was dozing off. “What’s it like?”

“Bright.” Summer smiled, more asleep than awake. “Mama says it’s bright. Like a star. And warm, and sweet, like lilacs in Central Park in the spring. Papa says there are bees the size of baseballs, and flowers all the colors of the rainbow, and garnets in the trees, and there’s dancing in the evenings, and games, and poetry.”

She could imagine it so clearly, see it on the backs of her eyelids.

She couldn’t wait.

“Huh,” said Lolo, incredulous. Summer thought he was going to make fun, but he didn’t.

So she followed bees the size of baseballs all the way down into a deep, garnet-colored sleep.

Siobahn met with Carran in a street bakery just off Maiden Lane. She chose a two person table near the dirty window so she could watch the snow fall between the skyscrapers. Morris ordered hot tea and two kronuts, because the pastry reminded Siobahn of Summer. She missed her daughter and was regretting letting Summer go. Winter had long ago lost his claim to the fay Court. Summer was another matter entirely; she needed to be cossetted and kept safe.

But Siobahn, better than anyone else, knew that safety was a very changeable notion.

She nibbled at the kronut as she waited. It was flaky and too sweet on her tongue, but when she followed it with bitter tea, it made a perfect breakfast.

The bakery was busy with locals and tourists, but when Carran pushed his way out of the snow and through the door, the small space emptied out at once, because the young
sidhe
wished for privacy. Even the baker and the sales clerk ducked out into the weather, abandoning ship without a second thought.

Siobahn was impressed.

“Nicely done,” she said, as Carran shed his long coat and shook damp from his hair.

Beneath his coat he wore Gucci trousers and an expensive shirt. His feet were bare and caked with mud and snow.

He shrugged slightly, wild blue eyes twinkling.

“Fay business is fay business. They’ll go for a nice walk-about, and when they return, they won’t recall they were ever absent. Tea, is it?” He slid behind the counter. “I prefer coffee, and—ah!—look at these lovely jammy scones.”

Morris, standing against the windows, radiated disapproval. Siobahn smiled into her tea.

“Do you remember, Carran,” she asked, “the berry scones Gloriana served mid-spring? For days on end, the Progress stank of ascot berry, until finally she gave up that particular gluttony.”

Carran shrugged again. Siobahn noted the way his shirt spread across his shoulders and decided he paid his tailor well.

“I remember the mid-spring massacres,” he said. “Mortals and
sidhe
elders mowed down like so much spring grass. Gloriana sang while my mother died. But, no, I don’t remember the scones.”

He poured coffee into a ceramic mug, added three sugars, and used bakers’ tongs to select a plump scone. Instead of rummaging for a plate, he wrapped the scone in a bit of wax paper and took it with him to Siobahn’s table.

“So.” He sank into the second chair. “I have little information for you so soon, I’m afraid.” Setting his breakfast on the table, he dug into his pocket, retrieved a shiny new mobile phone, and slapped it next to his coffee. “It’s as you say, she’s contemplating treason, but that’s no surprise.”

“Contemplating?” Siobahn regarded the lad. “We contemplated betrayal long before we found the courage to commit. ’Contemplating’ is not yet a death sentence.”

Carran’s smile didn’t quite reach his eyes.

“She shares her secrets with the mortal cop, no others, not yet. Alice is perhaps closer to that inner sanctum yet than I.”

“Alice.” Siobahn recalled the petite girl in ripped fishnet stockings. “She’s not one of mine.”

“She’s one of mine. She’ll do as I ask, when I ask it. It won’t be poison this time, I suppose?”

“No.” Siobahn didn’t like how casually the boy spoke of murder. He’d been unswervingly loyal to Malachi, and he’d played his part well thus far, managing to insinuate himself into Katherine Grey’s small entourage, but she thought he hadn’t yet realized how infinitely precious was a single exile’s life, so long as that life could be made loyal.

If Carran hadn’t come to understand that simple fact in five hundred years of forced banishment, he’d been broken to begin with.

She wished she knew how far Malachi had trusted the boy. She wished she had Barker to consult. But Barker had run off, just like Summer. And there was an empty, aching spot in her chest where Malachi used to be.

“There are other ways to put down uprising.” She ordered, “For now, watch and wait.”

Carran ate his pastry in quick, neat bites, with obvious relish but without lingering. He watched Siobahn all the while. His precious phone belled and beeped twelve times in the ninety seconds it took him to consume the scone, but for once he ignored it.

“Okay,” he said at last, drying his fingers on his shirt. “It’s your call. But I don’t like the cop. He’s smart and he’s canny and he’s watchful, and thanks to your heir, he knows more than he should about killing the folk.”

“Geimhreadh
is not my heir,” Siobahn corrected, sharp, angry when the thoughts that had been circling her skull only half an hour earlier were made real by the young assassin. “My daughter will sit on the throne, when the time comes.”

Carran’s lips set into a thin line. Against the window Morris stirred.

“That’s a mistake,” the lad said, blunt. “Whatever your feelings for your son, my lady, he’s next in line and well beloved.”

“He’s impulsive.” Siobahn clutched her teacup in both hands. “And irresponsible. He poked a hole between two worlds out of hubris, let the
sluagh
run free, and risked exposing us to genocide. Or have you forgotten our history?”

“I haven’t,” he admitted. “The humans have always feared and hated us; it’s true their iron tools tasted almost as much of our blood as Gloriana’s whim has. But,” he tapped the table top with long fingers, “Winter is your late husband’s true get. That streak of impulsiveness seated deep within Malachi’s bones. Winter palpably tried to build us a way home. A mistake, but a child’s mistake, and one made very much in his father’s tradition.”

The tea in Siobahn’s cup roiled with bubbles and steamed when before it had grown cold. Both she and the sharp-tongued lad carefully ignored the evidence of her temper.

“Malachi did not sit the throne.
I
do. Best for you if you keep that firmly in mind, Carran Kin-Killer.”

He didn’t flinch. Siobahn gave him credit for bravery.

“I am always loyal to the bloodline, my lady,” he replied, bowing his head over his own tea. Dun locks flopped over his pale face, hiding his expression, but his words rang true.

“Swear it,” she said. “I want to hear it off your tongue.”

“Saol fada chugat,”
he pledged quietly, lifting his chin. “I have served your family since birth.
I gcónaí is go deo
.
”

Siobahn nodded. “Go, then. Keep watch and wait.”

Carran pushed back his chair and rose, finishing his tea in one deep swallow. Siobahn liked the way his body moved, an economy of muscle. She thought that, if she had been younger and less wise, she might have kept him at her side for beauty’s sake.

He pocketed his phone, bowed once to Siobahn and once, perhaps ironically, to Morris. Then he padded barefoot out into the snow. Almost as soon as he stepped through the door, the bakery began to once more fill with mortals.

Siobahn stood as well, tilting her head at Morris. He followed her out the door, two exact paces behind. She wondered who he thought would dare threaten her in daylight, on the street. Michael Smith was dead and gone, and there was no reason to believe Gloriana had sent another in his place. Still, Morris fairly bristled with nerves.

“You’re worse than the Kin-Killer,” she said over her shoulder. The snow came down in waves, coating her hair and cooling her cheeks. The cold, sharp smell reminded her of home, and she sighed. “Katherine isn’t a complete fool, nor fully mad, not yet.”

“Kin-Killer,”
Morris repeated. “Do you hear yourself, m’lady? You’ve given that young pup a title and a purpose all in one breath.”

Siobahn only smiled. Inhaling snow, she increased her pace. Mortals parted before her like butter before a hot knife.

“Come,” she said.

“Where?” he asked, falling into step.

“Hunting,” Siobahn promised, and smiled wider.

Siobahn walked up Fifth Avenue. The snowfall grew heavier, coating her wrap and turning her dark hair to wet tendrils. Three months earlier the damp would have been an irritant. She’d have spoken a simple warming Cant, as Morris had already, and kept the snow away. Three months earlier she wouldn’t have noticed the way the ice on her flesh matched the chill at her core.

“My lady,” Morris asked. “Where are we headed?”

“The carousel.”

Morris chewed her answer over for two blocks before he spoke again.

“It’s likely closed, my lady. In this weather. Begging your pardon.”

Siobahn tried not to grimace. Morris was so very, very proper. And always so deeply concerned. About everything.

“I don’t plan to ride it.” Siobahn paused in a doorway to set a gold
sidhe
coin in the hat of a scrawny beggar. The beggar met her smile, lidless eyes the color of spoiled milk.

“I’m looking for Nightingale,” she said.

“It’s been decades since
that
roamed about the carousel,” Morris protested. “Himself chased it away in the 80s.”

The beggar plucked the coin from his hat and secreted it away under his coat. Siobahn strode on. Morris increased his pace to walk at her side. The weather was cowing mortals, the sidewalks beginning to empty out as tourists took shelter in tiny shops and office laborers returned to work.

“My lady,” Morris said. “That one hasn’t been sighted for so long Himself hoped it dead or moved on.”

“My husband occasionally made mistakes,” Siobahn answered. “That creature is never far from the seat of my power. It hasn’t permission to die or the strength of will to move on.”

Morris made a low noise of disbelief, but didn’t dare speak his doubts out loud.

At 60th Street, Siobahn turned into Central Park. Snow covered the grass, making the paths slippery. Skeletal trees lined the walk, furred with frost. Siobahn set her hand on Morris’s arm because he expected it. In truth she was as sure-footed as a cat and he knew it.

It was only a game the exiles played, an attempt to camouflage what they were and appear more human. Siobahn had been performing the charade for so long she sometimes almost forgot what it meant to be
sidhe
.

“My lady,” Morris murmured, patting her fingers with one white-gloved hand.  “We’re being stalked.”

Siobahn showed her teeth. She nodded. “It appears we’re not the only hunters about in this weather, Morris.”

They crossed Gapstow Bridge in perfect step, age-old companions promenading where so many had before. Siobahn ran her bare hand over the blocks of stone along the bridge’s low wall. Snow crystals dusted her fingertips. She flicked the crystals away like so much fairy dust.

When they reached the other side of the bridge a man detached himself from beneath a skeletal sycamore and joined the promenade. The tip of a half-smoked cigarette glowed red between his first and second fingers.

“Disgusting habit, tobacco,” Siobahn said. “I confined Summer to her room for an entire month after I caught her stinking of cigarette smoke.”

“Seems a bit harsh, but I agree they’re the devil’s own habit.” Bran Healy replied. “I quit years ago.”

Siobahn gave the cigarette in his hand a pointed look. Bran shrugged. He took a long drag, then dropped the butt in the snow and left it to smoke away.

“Settles my nerves,” he confessed. “I’ve needed that lately.”

Morris grunted. Siobahn stopped. She looked the ex-cop up and down, from the tip of his battered running shoes, up the faded jeans and cheap sport coat, over gray stubble, and across that long line of stitches on his face. The scar would run from the corner of his right eye all the way to the back of his skull. More stubble was growing up around the incision, but it was growing in as white as the falling snow.

“Yes,” Siobahn said, regarding that newborn white streak, “you’ve had quite a time of it, Detective Healy. Headaches?”

“Some.” He looked uncomfortable .

“Katherine can banish the pain completely, you know. She has very powerful healing magics.”

“I prefer the more usual cures.” He smiled. “Advil, a glass of good whiskey.”

Siobahn started walking again. She could see the brick roof of the Carousel in the distance. There was no sound of music. Morris was correct; the ride was closed due to weather.

“What do you want?” Siobahn asked.

“Winter,” the human replied, blunt. “Katherine’s quite visibly distressed—I’d say frightened, if I hadn’t been reliably informed nothing frightens the
sidhe—
but she won’t talk to me about it. Just says it’s not my concern.”

“It’s not.”

“You’re wrong. You made it my concern, ten years ago, when you had me transferred to D.C. just so I could keep an eye on your son.”

“A job. Nothing more. I paid you handsomely.”

“Winter’s a good kid,” Bran continued as if he hadn’t heard. “He’s saved my badge more than a few times and my life at least twice. I watched him grow up, and he grew up fine, thanks to Gabby.”

Low hills lined either side of the path and low evergreen brush. The carousel building grew up out of the ground, arches dark, striped brick slick with frost. Siobahn could just make out the carousel itself behind locked gates, carved horses and lions and fantastical creatures motionless.