Unquiet Dreams (37 page)

He quirked his lips with a cagey smile. “Compromise, Connor. That’s how we get things done.”

I didn’t want to get into that particular conversation. “You’ll need all the compromising you can get. Gerin set back Seelie/Consortium relations fifty years.”

Nigel nodded. “Maybe not a bad thing. The Consortium needed a slap down.”

“So did the Guild,” I said.

It was his turn to frown. “I wish you wouldn’t take what happened between you and the Guild so personally, Connor. It’s shortsighted.”

I laughed. “Really? You guys didn’t seem to be very long-viewed when you were attacking each other.”

“There are matters of weight you know nothing about, Connor. Truly important matters that are more than just one man’s problem.” He used that superior tone he has when he’s lecturing the ignorant. I’d heard it often during my training. It didn’t intimidate me anymore.

Exasperated, I shook my head. “I’ve been thinking about what to say to you for a week, Nigel. Sometimes I thought I’d let it go, and sometimes I thought I was being petty. But you know what? I can’t let it go.

“Look at you. And the Guild. And the Consortium. Some of the most powerful fey in the world, who think they know better than anyone else, and one man was able to bring it all crashing down.”

I ticked off the list with my hands. “Gerin knew just how to manipulate each and every one of you. He waited until Briallen was away because he knew she would have sensed the drys in his staff. He turned Keeva into the good soldier because he knew her ambitions. He played Manus’s fear of competition to distract him. And you, Nigel, he laid little crumbs that led to the Consortium, because he knew your obsession with beating them. And you know what? A dead human boy and a druid with no ability wrecked everything for him. Not the ones with so-called ability.”

He shifted uncomfortably in the crèche. “That’s simplifying things a bit.”

“Is it? You’ve said to me on more than one occasion that I’ve left the path. Let me give you a bit of wisdom, Nigel. When you pick one path and never reconsider, you never know when you’re lost. That’s what’s happened to the fey.”

He pursed his lips. “If that’s what makes you feel better over the loss of your abilities, Connor, then you really are lost.”

I shook my head and smiled. “Here’s something else I’m starting to learn, Nigel. Ability isn’t just what you can do with essence. You’ve let your fey ability define you and your world. Without it, you’re the one who’s lost. Ability is a state of mind, too. If you consider nothing else, consider this: Somehow I succeeded against Gerin where you failed.”

One side of his mouth dipped down in anger. “Happenstance.”

I shrugged. “Call it what you like. Luck. Fate. Whatever. The Wheel of the World turns as it will, Nigel. You don’t turn It. One of these days you’ll figure that out. And when you do? That’s when you’ll really start learning.”

And then I just left. Didn’t wait for him to respond. Didn’t wait for his permission to leave. I just left. As I passed through the door, I felt oddly elated. I meant every word I said. Better yet, I believed every word I said. Life gave me things, then took them away. It gave me a chance to reconsider everything. Luck or not, I was on a new path, one I didn’t hate so much anymore. Not after finally understanding where and how I learned my arrogance and what it could do to twist you.

Guild security agents were hovering high overhead, still on high alert, as I left the hospital. Down in Back Bay, their Consortium counterparts patrolled the streets. Both the Guildhouse and the Consortium consulate were armed camps until who killed whom and why got sorted out, if it ever did. Even the Boston mayor had gotten into the act, declaring wide swathes of the city as no-fey zones to ease the human fears that it wasn’t safe to be around the fey. Temporary, he says. We’ll see.

No one would rest easy for a while. Gerin’s spell had damaged essence, twisting it here, erasing it there, and weakening it everywhere. Uncertain tomorrows weighed on the minds of the great and the small. Deep-seated desires for power and control cluttered everything. The Consortium feared Seelie Court. Seelie Court feared the Consortium. They nursed angry grievances over Convergence and blamed each other for it happening. Humans fear the fey, and the fey fear the humans. And every night, everywhere, they all go to bed, fearing the dawn, tossing restlessly as they plot or worry about the new day, their sleep disrupted by unquiet dreams of power and hope and fear. Not a one of them knows what will happen. Some people look forward to that. Some dread it.

Joe flashed into the air next to me. “You okay?” he asked.

“Yeah. You?”

He put on quite the show of considering the answer. “Actually, I’m feeling a little faint.”

He somersaulted in the air, screaming with laughter. We had been doing this routine all week.

“You know, Joe, you’re obviously hiding your fear of death with jokes.”

He stopped and looked at me doe-eyed. “Am I that transparent?”

I smiled. “I can see right through you, buddy.”

He squealed and did loops. I glanced up at Avalon Memorial, grateful that for once I wasn’t lying inside. As we turned in the direction of the Weird, I shook my head at the turns my life had taken. Things change. The Wheel of the World turns the way It will. I had to get up in the morning, had to face the day and hope for the best. That’s just the way it is. One door closes; another opens. A shiver went through me.

Mark Del Franco lives with his partner, Jack, in Boston, Massachusetts, where the orchids tremble in fear since Mark killed Jack’s palm plants. Please visit his website at www.markdelfranco.com for more information about the Convergent World.