Unfallen Dead (14 page)

We sprawled away from each other. Chests heaving, we stared at the ceiling. My jeans were twisted around my ankles, and my sodden shirt had ridden up to my chest. Meryl lay with her boots planted on the bed, her skirt flipped up onto her naked torso.

“This isn’t how I pictured it,” I said.

She laughed. “Me either.”

I laughed, too, like I hadn’t in a long time. I rolled toward her and traced a spiral in the moisture of her cleavage.

She trailed her fingers through the thick stubble on my head. Neither of us spoke for the longest time, spooned together and lost in thought.

Meryl cleared her throat. “You never said why you left New York.”

“I couldn’t bear to hurt Dylan after saving him like that.”

She rolled her head toward me. “Why would you hurt him?”

I looked into her eyes. “When I bonded my essence to him, I felt what he felt. I didn’t realize Dylan was in love with me.”

She propped herself on one elbow and leaned her face over mine, her crazy orange hair tickling my cheeks as she gave me a lopsided smile. “Gods, you’re freakin’ clueless sometimes.”

I kissed her again.

After some clothing adjustments, Meryl and I dozed off a couple of times. The final time I woke up, I was alone. No note. She didn’t return the messages I left on her cell. The lack of response was making me anxious.

I hadn’t expected what had happened with her to happen. Sure, I wanted it. Her. But when Meryl wasn’t dismissing my attempts at seduction, she was laughing at them. I was beginning to think her lack of interest was more than teasing. And yet, last night, when it was the farthest thing from my mind, when I felt so alone on the sidewalk in front of my building, she was the first person I thought of, and she responded. Never in my life had I had sex with someone out of grief. I didn’t know what to think about it. It didn’t give me pleasure or pain. Release. It felt like release, but from what I couldn’t quite figure.

Maybe she was upset with me. Maybe she thought the whole evening had been a ploy to get her into bed finally or that I had taken advantage of her at an emotionally vulnerable moment. Maybe I was a bad lay, and she was in shell shock. I threw the last one in to amuse myself. I hoped.

Beyond all the anxiety of what the sex meant in terms of our relationship, I needed to talk to her about my dream again. It had changed. I still saw the stone and the rippling waves, but the two red and black figures at the end appeared to tangle and merge as they fought. In the dream, they were too distant to recognize any features that would identify them as real people. I couldn’t tell if they were related to the stone or the ripples or even each other.

The next day, the door buzzer jolted me out of my chair like an electric shock. Unannounced visitors to my apartment were rare. I didn’t live in a drop-in part of town. No one I knew who would visit me lived in the Weird, except maybe my brother Callin. He wasn’t likely to ring my bell without calling. Given that, my anxiety spiked whenever someone knocked on my door. I was supposed to be living in a secure building, which was kind of a joke since my neighbors were art students and dwarves with crazy schedules. When the door buzzer went off, at least that meant the front door was closed for a change. I pressed the intercom button. “Yes?”

The old speaker crackled with a male voice. “Connor macGrey, Her Highness, Ceridwen, Queen, requests your presence.”

When someone uses the “mac” in my name, it’s a sign they don’t know me at all. “When?”

“Now, sir.”

I leaned on my shoulder against the wall. The hearing wasn’t going to go away. The Seelie Court could drag it out for as along as they wanted, or at least until they were sure that I—or any druid—posed no threat to its power. The fact that Maeve had sent an underQueen to investigate showed how seriously she took the matter. A lesser queen to be sure, but still a queen. I pressed the intercom. “I’ll be down in a minute.”

My sweatpants and T-shirt were not much of a royal audience outfit. I swapped into black jeans and threw a black button-down shirt on and my usual boots, the ones that have one occupied knife sheath each. It wasn’t formal, but I’d be damned if I was going to make myself any more presentable than that on such short notice.

The liveried driver waited outside my building. He opened the rear door of a limo for me.

“I prefer to ride up front,” I said.

He inclined his head and closed the door. “As you prefer then, sir.”

Even though I was basically telling him I was giving up the privilege of being pampered, he walked with me to the opposite side of the car to hold the passenger door for me. He guided the limo back to Old Northern and turned toward the channel bridge. A police squad car sat at the end of the bridge. The lone officer waved as we passed him.

Boston hates limos. The old streets are short and narrow and don’t afford much turning space. People still want their luxuries, though. Two days ago, I had been in a black town car with Dylan. Now, I was in my second limo in as many nights. One could argue I was moving up. I knew better, though. Even when the ride is free, there’s a price to be paid. Besides, I didn’t think Carmine’s pimp limo counted as moving up.

We didn’t travel far but pulled up to the Boston Harbor Hotel. If I’d thrown a rock out the window of my study, I’d have hit the place. Before I could get out, another liveried brownie opened the rear door on the driver’s side. I couldn’t help smiling at the confused look on her face when she saw the empty backseat. I thanked the driver and let myself out.

The second brownie rushed to my side. “I’m sorry, Druid macGrey. The driver should have let you sit in back.”

She hurried to keep pace with me into the lobby. “I insisted on the front. Are you my escort?”

“Yes, sir. This way, sir.” Two more liveried servants flanked an elevator. I stepped inside with my anxious escort, and she pressed the floor panel for the Presidential Suite, the best rooms in the place. Despite its name, more royalty than democratically elected officials stayed in the suite.

The elevator escort turned me over to yet another servant in the suite’s foyer. He was in what might be called uniform casual since he didn’t have a cap or epaulets. If I’d been dealing with anyone else but a royal member of the Seelie Court, I’d have suspected someone was trying to either impress or intimidate me. But I knew the Seelie Court. They took this level of servitude for granted and didn’t care what I thought.

The house servant bowed and left me in the living room. I supposed the room made some people feel at home, but it looked nothing like my place. The room was decorated in soft shades of blue and beige, with vaguely Asian accents. It had three sofas in a space larger than my entire apartment. The lamps had been lowered to let the harbor lights twinkle in the windows. Quiet music played, a traditional harp-and-flute melody that I assumed was meant to be soothing.

Ceridwen stepped into the room, stopping in front of the windows to face me with a soft expression that grew into a small smile. She wore casual clothing, a flowing tunic in rust with loose pants. She had gathered her hair in a loose knot at the middle of her back. “I’m glad you came.”

I strolled to the center of the room, still taking in the surroundings. “I wasn’t sure I had a choice.”

She laughed, not loud but too long, as she turned to the wet bar and filled two small glasses with whiskey. She handed one to me, held hers up, and we tapped.

“Sláinte,”
she said.

“And yours,” I responded.

We sipped. She didn’t say anything but stood with a slight glimmer of the whiskey on her deep maroon lips before gesturing to the sofas. “Let’s sit.”

She draped herself along the end of a couch, pulling her bare feet up off the floor and toying with her glass. “We seem to have gotten off to a bad start.”

I leaned back into one of the other sofas. “Are we at the start of something?”

She smiled through another sip. “We offended . . .
I
offended you. I apologize.”

I chuckled. “You must really want something if you’re willing to apologize.”

Ceridwen stared at her glass, perhaps deciding how to respond. “I am here for the truth of what happened at Forest Hills. No one here has been cooperative.”

“Maybe you should try a little less emphasis on commanding presence and a little more on diplomacy.”

She laughed again, this time honestly. “Yes, well, there is that. I’m not used to having my motives questioned. At Tara, the knowledge that I desire an answer is sufficient to produce results.”

“This country has a problem with that attitude. We had a little revolution over it.”

She nodded, continuing to affect a bemused smile. “Yes. I noticed you said ‘we.’ You consider yourself a citizen here?”

I leaned my elbows on my knees, rolling the glass between my palms. “I’ve never sworn fealty to Maeve, if that’s what you’re asking. Have you?”

She slid from the couch and retrieved the decanter. She topped off my glass before sitting again. “Of course. All the underKings and -Queens did after Convergence. It was necessary.”

I eyed her over my glass. “Necessary, but not sincere?”

She pursed her lips in amusement. “Oh, I don’t think you know me well enough to dare that question. The events of Forest Hills were felt at Tara. There was a dimming of essence. Do you really not remember anything else from Forest Hills?”

I shook my head. “No.”

“What if I said I don’t believe you?”

I shrugged. “What if I said I don’t care?”

The appearance of amusement finally slipped from her. “You don’t know what you’re dealing with, Connor macGrey.

A druid with no abilities means nothing to the players involved.”

I smiled broadly to annoy her. “And yet here is a queen of Faerie serving me drinks.”

She gave me a measured look, then turned on her bemused smile again. “So it would seem.”

She rose from the couch and went to the windows. The music played as she stared off to the harbor. One of the ways I can distinguish the difference between the fey and human normals is by the strength of their body essence. The fey have a more pronounced aura around them and, as Ceridwen stood looking out the window, I felt her withdraw hers into herself as much as she could. “Call the spear.”

I stood. “Why?”

She didn’t face me, but her eyes shifted to my reflection in the glass. “I want to see if you were able to take it from me because you were in a place of concentrated power. It’s at the Guildhouse now. If it responds to your call from there, it’s bonded to you.”

I debated whether she was leading me into a trap. I couldn’t see how it would be any more of a risk than walking into her suite. She didn’t need the spear if she were going to overpower me. I lifted my hand.
“Ithbar.”

I felt the coolness of activated essence, and the spear appeared, cold and slick in my hand. The faint odor of ozone tickled my nostrils.

Ceridwen did not turn but lowered her chin. She held a hand out.
“Ithbar.”

The spear shivered out of my hand and into hers. I clenched my stomach as she turned and planted the butt of the spear on the ground. “We are not pleased by this. The spear is ours, Connor macGrey. It would be foolish of you to forget that.”

“If you own it, tell it to ignore me,” I said.

“This spear is key to the defense of Tara, Grey. Maeve is under threat; perhaps the entire Seelie Court is. If you interfere with our security, you could doom yourself as well.”

“What threat?” I asked.

She compressed her lips, annoyance flaring in her eyes. “Bergin Vize. That is all you need to know. That should be enough to tell you the danger of Maeve’s situation. I am appealing to your honor as a druid of our people. You must tell me how to control the Taint.”

I wondered if the mere mention of Vize’s name was expected to throw me into a panicked rage. Maybe a few weeks earlier it might have worked, but at the moment, Ceridwen’s motives were too suspect for me to buy into it. “That’s a pretty clumsy attempt to get me to cooperate. I’ve already told you everything I know. I know nothing more about the Taint and even less about the spear. You brought the spear into this, not me. I have no idea why it bonded to me, but obviously you don’t have the control over it you thought you did. Don’t blame me, and don’t threaten me.”

Her eyes went cold, the fathomless cold of an ancient fey. “We make a better ally than enemy.”

As unsettling as her stare was, I wouldn’t let it cow me. “So do I, Ceridwen.”

I sensed her essence surge, but she held it within instead of releasing it on me. It ebbed away. It probably had occurred to her that a dead body in such a nice hotel would wreck the carpet.

A faint bitterness crept into her face. “You wouldn’t last long at Court.”

I gave her my back and walked toward the foyer. “Maybe Court wouldn’t last long around me.”

I let myself out. The liveried servant startled when I appeared at the elevator. He must have been expecting a sending to tell him we had finished. The elevator opened on the same anxious woman who had ridden up with me. “Sir,” she said.

We didn’t speak until we hit the lobby. I held my hand up and said,
“Ithbar.”
The spear materialized in my hand. I handed it to the brownie. “Please delivery this to Ceridwen. Tell her to be careful; the point can be sharp.”

I hated when royalty acted like royalty. It was why I never considered the diplomatic corps. Briallen might have felt comfortable playing their annoying games of privilege, but they made me want to hit the players. If I hadn’t gotten the point across to Ceridwen that she couldn’t intimidate me, she sure as hell would get it when her servant got back upstairs.

One of the lobby servants started to lead me across the thick carpeting toward the front doors. “This way, sir.”

At the back end of the lobby, doors led out to the harbor. “No, thanks. I’ll walk.”

I strolled the dock overlooking the channel. Luxury yachts rested at the pier behind the hotel. In nice weather, the plaza hosted everything from movie nights to concerts to weddings. I could see and hear them from my apartment. Across the mouth of the channel, the Weird shimmered with a rainbow light of essence. I picked out the faint blue glow of my computer in the upper window of my dilapidated warehouse apartment. No boats docked beneath it, but a fair amount of sea wrack clung to the pilings.