War for the Oaks (27 page)

Then she called toward the kitchen, "I'm going to get dressed and drive down for a little solo practice." No reply, except the rattle of dishes, and the thump of the refrigerator door. "You want to come
with, or do you want to delegate it to Willy or somebody?"

That got him to poke his head out the door. He asked, sour-voiced, "Would you prefer Willy?"

"No, you little twink," she replied gently.

"Oh." His head disappeared into the kitchen again. After a moment, he said, "Then I suppose I'd best go with you."

Eddi rolled her eyes and went to get dressed.

They rode the Triumph through a balmy afternoon wind, dodging downtown traffic. Eddi swung off Washington Avenue, parked the bike next to the iron stairs, and would have gone up them. But the phouka caught her arm.

"Chivalry, my primrose, must give place to safety. I go first." He trotted up the stairs, and Eddi followed him.

A strand of green vine with starry purple flowers was twined in the door handle. The phouka snorted and pulled it free.

"What is it?"

"A little May Day hate-mail. Pay it no mind." He tossed the vine over the railing.

"Did I tell you you could read my mail? What did it mean?"

"It's nightshade. It would do you no damage; it's purely a message of ill will. And it could be"—he grinned with a great emphasis on teeth—"from anyone." He held out his hand for the keys, and she gave them to him.

She dreaded the opening of the door for a moment, but the room was untouched. She turned on her amp, to let it warm.

"Can they get in here when we're gone?" she asked the phouka.

"Curiously enough, this place is safer with us out of it than in it. It is not a dwelling, you see, and different magical customs apply."

"I'll have to trust you on that," Eddi said. She plugged in the Rickenbacker and began to tune it.

She'd brought a sheaf of song lyrics with her. For the next hour and a half, she made up guitar riffs and fit them together into the melodies in her head, wrapped the melodies around the words. The phouka lay on his stomach on the floor. Just when she would decide he'd fallen asleep, he'd say, "I like that," or "More distortion."

At last she let a long minor chord die away. When the phouka looked up at its last trembling edge, she said, "So how do I do magic?"

He rolled onto his back. "Deceptions, illusions, and tricks of the light, my child," he told the ceiling beams. "That's what you've got
from Faerie. A few things more as well, but they come and go. The power to cloud men's minds is always to hand."

"Could I make you believe something that wasn't true?"

He studied her through his eyelashes. "You could make me believe anything at all."

"I believe I'll just play my guitar." Eddi sighed.

Hedge was the first to arrive for practice. He seemed surprised to see Eddi and the phouka.

"Afternoon," Eddi said. "How are you?"

Hedge shrugged and mumbled.

"Take any direct hits last night?"

Hedge peered at her, narrow-eyed, then turned to the phouka.

"Willy told her," said the phouka. When Hedge scowled at him, he added, "Don't blame me, old hedgehog. I was asleep when he did it."

"Didn' think y' were 'lowed to sleep," Hedge said darkly. Other than his singing, it was the clearest utterance Eddi had ever heard from him.

"Lighten up, troops," she ordered. "There's no harm done." She turned to Hedge. "I don't know how long you promised to play in a rock 'n' roll band and keep an eye on the mortal chick. But as of right now, that contract is void. Fizzled. Poof."

Hedge's eyes got round for just a second. Then they squinted again, and his face was sullen and shuttered.

"I want you in my band," she said to him. Hedge blinked, and all his shutters seemed to come a little unhinged. "But it's
my
band, and you don't have to play in it because he says so"—Eddi pointed to the phouka—"or because the Sidhe say so. You stay if you want to. If you don't want to, you're free to walk."

Hedge looked sideways at her. "Wha' 'bout Willy?"

"As soon as he shows up, he gets the same choice. That's no concern of yours. In the band, you answer to me."

Hedge shot a glance at the phouka.

"You'll get no help from me," the phouka said. "Except that she can't get rid of me, I am her slave in all things."

The decision hung in the air for a moment. Then Hedge startled Eddi with a growling chuckle. With no more comment than that, he picked up the black Steinberger bass, plugged it in, and turned on his amp. He started up a fast pattern in the key of G, and Eddi shook her head wonderingly and followed him into it.

Carla came in a few minutes after that, and Dan behind her. They were carrying a snakepit's worth of cables and patch cords, and a wedge-shaped, suitcase-sized box with a handle. . . .

"A mixing board?" Eddi squeaked.

Carla and Dan looked equally pleased. Dan said, Dude in South St. Paul had a backup board. He needed some studio work. So we did a little trade."

"What about speakers?"

"You can help carry 'em up," Carla said, wrinkling her nose. "They're heavy as boxcars, but the cones are JBLs."

"I'm impressed. Come on, gents." Eddi nodded at the phouka and Hedge. "Let's make like roadies."

When they came out, Willy was leaning on the railing at the bottom of the stairs. At first glance, he looked insufferably proud. Then she saw his face, and how much his expression resembled the closed and guarded one that Hedge often wore.

With an effort, she grinned at him as she sailed past. "Oh, good. You're just in time to carry some nice heavy speakers." Out of the corner of her eye she saw the surprise wash his features, and she wondered what he'd been expecting.

Carla opened the wagon's rear gate. The speakers were homemade and odd-looking, but not excessively large. "Don't let 'em fool you," Dan warned, rubbing his arms.

Hedge slid one onto the tailgate. He nodded shortly; then he looked at Eddi and raised one heavy eyebrow. "Go for it," she told him.

He swung the thing easily to his shoulder, and held it there with one arm while he crossed the parking lot to the stairs.

Dan stared after him, and whistled finally. "But he's a
little
sucker . . ."

"We're all just full of surprises," Willy replied. He slid the other speaker out of the wagon and followed Hedge.

By some unspoken armistice, they devoted themselves to setting up the PA, and ignored all the questions and mysteries. Eddi saw them working together, not quite a team yet, but no longer quite an unrelated group, either. It hurt her and warmed her at once. So much unresolved, so much danger.

"All right," she said, when all the mikes worked and the monitor speakers had stopped feeding back. They all turned to her. Carla's thin, mobile face and big dark eyes; Dan, wired and vague at once, peering
earnestly through his square-framed glasses; Hedge, taciturn to the point of sullen, all street-kid looks and supernatural origins; Willy Silver, whose splendid face didn't hide his feelings as well as he thought it did. Eddi realized, faced with them all, that this was the closest she would ever come to her dream band.

And the phouka, of course, sitting cross-legged on the floor looking wild and fey and foolish. He turned his eyes up to hers just then and grinned. She gathered up her courage and began.

"We're not all of us what we seem," she said. The phouka snorted. "Carla, how much did you tell Dan last night?"

Carla shrugged. "That you were mixed up in a battle that was being fought by elves. You can probably guess what he said."

Eddi turned to Dan. "Did she convince you?"

He shook his head. "I figure
she's
convinced. Somethin' funny's going on, but I'm not buying little elves, girl."

"I resent these comments about my height," the phouka said. Dan looked narrowly at him. "It's quite true, you know—all except the 'little.' "

"He's one of them," Eddi said apologetically. "He's a phouka. That much Carla knew. What she didn't know"—and here she directed the apology at Carla—"is that Willy and Hedge aren't human, either."

From Carla she got a round-eyed stare. Willy looked uncomfortable. Hedge seemed to be getting a certain wry enjoyment out of the whole tableau. Dan said nothing, but frowned narrowly at Eddi. She decided she preferred his vague look.

"No kidding?" Carla said weakly.

"I just found out last night."

"We've been had."

"Fast-forward this shit," Dan said suddenly, not loud but harsher than Eddi had ever heard him. "You all in on this?"

Eddi blinked at him.

"Yeah, I get kinda zoned out sometimes," Dan continued, when he got no answer. "But I'm not brain-damaged. So if you think you can play games with the dumb nigger, you can find another set of keys." And he began to turn off power to his equipment, snap, snap, snap.

"Dan!" Eddi said, and he stopped.
Follow it up, girl, or you lose him
. She was no good with clever arguments—but she was very good with the truth. "This band means too much to me to mess with. I'm not lying, and I'm not playing jokes. If anybody here is being tricked, it's
me. But I don't think I am. These people"—she made reference with a sweep of her hand, to Willy, Hedge, and the phouka—"really
aren't
human."

Eddi nodded toward the phouka. "You're the obvious proof," she said reluctantly.

"Certainly," said the phouka at once.

Willy made a sharp noise through his teeth. "Why go to the trouble? He can believe it or not. We don't have to jump through hoops for him." Then he stalked away across the room.

"Do it," Eddi told the phouka.

There was a dark sparkle all around him, the preface to his change, and Eddi wished she could stay and watch. No, she had to leave the phouka with the job of convincing Dan. Her problem was Willy.

She caught up with him at the other end of the cavernous room and grabbed his arm. She would have liked to take him by the shoulder and spin him to face her, like something from a Clint Eastwood movie. But the effect was the same. He rounded on her under his own power, teeth bared. He was suddenly the person who, the night before, had pulled himself out from under that horse, blood fresh on his lance.

Eddi poked him hard in the breastbone, before he could speak. If she let him speak, she would never get him under control again. . . .

"Don't you dare," she said, low-voiced. Any louder, after all, and her voice would shake. "Don't you ever fucking
dare
show that kind of contempt for anybody in this band. Do you play guitar better than Dan plays keyboards?"

After a moment, he shook his head angrily.

"Do you play better than Carla plays drums, or Hedge plays bass? No, I didn't think so. Then you better not care if they're fey, human, or little box turtles. They're your equals here, and you'll treat them that way."

"And what about you?" he said at last, through clenched teeth.

Now there was a question, indeed. "I'm the one who had to tell you this. I'm the boss. I keep the whole thing together. And don't you forget it."

He breathed like a man in a fight—which, she supposed, he was. And so many things to fight against, no matter which way he turned: Eddi, the Sidhe, the music in his hands that demanded an outlet. In an instant, he'd choose sides. She had to make him choose the right one.

So she stepped back. "I'm sorry. I'm assuming things. There's no reason for you to put up with this."

He looked startled. Good.

"Nobody can force you to be in this band," Eddi told him gently. "I won't. Your queen can't, because if your only reason for being here is her orders, I won't take you." When he looked dubious, she added, "I
won't
. She doesn't rule here. This is
my
band. She can get down on her lily-white knees and beg me to take you, and I won't do it. But if you want to play rock 'n' roll with these guys, and you'll take directions from me and leave the Seelie Court out of it—" Eddi shrugged. "Up to you."

Willy inhaled, let it out. "What about us?" he said, and his voice had something in it that made the meaning clear.

Eddi bit her lip. "You knew the first night that whatever happened between us had nothing to do with the band. That's something else you have to accept, if you stay."

Willy dislodged himself from the wall where she'd pinned him, and paced the length of the room. His head was down, and Eddi couldn't see his face.

At the opposite wall he turned, as if at bay, and said, "All right. It's a deal."

Eddi let out her breath at last. As close as she would ever come to her dream band . . .

The rest of the dream band watched them fixedly and in silence. The phouka, in his black-dog-from-hell form, sat in the middle of them like a statue of Anubis from an Egyptian tomb. He cocked an ear at her.

"Convinced?" Eddi asked Dan.

Dan looked thoughtful. "Hell of a piece of evidence," he said, pointing a thumb at the phouka.

"Am I not?" the phouka said, sounding pleased and furry.

Eddi frowned him into silence. "So you believe me?"

"Guess I gotta. But jeezus, girl . . . !"

Carla giggled. "Yeah, that's how I felt."

"Do you mind it all?" Eddi asked, since someone had to.

He looked down at one of his synthesizers, ran a finger across its display. "We're a good band," he said finally.

That, it seemed, was all that needed to be said. Eddi flexed her
fingers, startled by the feeling of power in them, the current of elation that made her lightheaded. She picked up her guitar. "Let's make some noise, then," she said softly. The microphone filled the room with her voice.

After three weeks of practice, they were better than any band Eddi had ever worked with. She suspected, half-elated and half-afraid, that by the end of the summer they might be better than any band she'd ever heard. If they all lived that long.

She stood in front of the bathroom mirror, putting on eyeliner. Her hands were inclined to shake. She wore skinny white jeans and a vintage beaded sweater with padded shoulders. "Jesus," she muttered at her reflection. "I look too pale. I look dead. Oh, godohgodoh—"