Whiskey and Water (35 page)

"Hey your own self," he said,
and set the laptop computer aside before heaving himself to his feet. And
stopped halfway, blinking, while Autumn knelt up, and Carel and her company
appeared in the hall doorway. "You weren't kidding."

Three children clustered behind her, two
boys and a girl. Well, Gypsy allowed,
children
might be an uncharitable
description. Young men and a young woman, twentysomething. A black-haired boy,
slender and well-made. The second boy a Gothy type with his dye job showing
red at the roots, and the girl ash-haired and contrasting hippie chic with the
scars and piercings decorating her flesh.
She
made Gypsy's old scars
itch, in particular, which was odd because there was nothing to her,
metaphysically speaking, and he could see the power dusting the boys as if
they'd been rubbing their hands over soft, silvery schist and the flakes of
compressed mica had coated their fingers and palms.

Carel, as she always did, glared with
power like the coals in a black iron furnace. She hesitated in the doorway, met
his eyes, smiled a little, and then turned her attention to Autumn. "Sorry
there wasn't more warning," she said. "I didn't think to call.
Autumn, Gypsy, I'd like you to meet Ian MacNeill, a Prince of the Daoine Sidhe;
Jewels—the young woman I spoke to you about on the phone, Turns"—Autumn winced
at the nickname, but couldn't hide her smile — "and Geoff.'

"And who's Geoff?" Gypsy said,
collecting himself enough to finish rising from among the books, step over
Autumn's legs, and extend his hand.

"Nobody in particular," Geoff
answered, but he was the first one to put out his hand. His grip was firm, a
little cool, as if he had been not wearing gloves outside. The safety pins
lining the outside seam of his pants jangled as he stepped back, giving way to
the girl.

She smiled as Gypsy took her hand, careful
of her bones, and shook it lightly. No shock of power, no initiation, for all
her scars, but he saw the sallow yellows and violets that swirled around her
and knew her inner bruising and her pain. He set her back on the shelf like a
china cup; there was a deep crack there that would take more skill than his to
mend.

Autumn had risen to her feet and come up
behind him, making soothing noises to the girl while Gypsy introduced himself
to the Prince. The young man seemed amused, and Gypsy supposed he'd broken some
protocol shaking hands with the others first, but he'd never had much to do
with royalty. Gypsy did notice the way the girl kept one corner of her
attention on the Prince no matter where she was, even when Autumn led her to
the sofa and insisted she and Geoff sit.

Gypsy released his grip and leaned back on
his heels, huffing into his beard as he planted his hands on his hips. "A
house full of the Fair Folk," he said, and turned to his hostesses.
"When you told me Carel was Merlin, Autumn, I didn't think you meant it
literally."

Carel looked up sharply. "What's she
been telling you?"

"It's my fault," Gypsy answered,
as Autumn lifted her hand, paused, and said, "I'll just make more
tea" over her shoulder as she brushed past Ian and fled the living room.

Carel smiled at him. "I knew you were
trouble from the minute I met you." It could have been worse. It could
have been Moira, or Jason, God forbid. She actually didn't mind Gypsy
knowing.
But she hoped he hadn't been
telling.
"What'd I miss?"

"You've been in Faerie," he
said.

Carel shrugged, as good as an admission
with an Elf in the room. "I get around."

Gyp laughed. Rumpelstiltskin, normally shy
in the presence of strangers, came and rubbed himself in loops around Carel's
ankles, sniffing and purring. She squatted to pick him up, and his long limbs
gangled over her shoulder and out of the cradle of her embrace, an armful of
cat and more.

Gypsy said, "Mostly, we've been
trying to figure out whether it's a portent of some sort that Autumn saw the
unicorn. And no, we haven't told Moira. A thing."

"Well, that's a relief then,"
Carel said. She dropped her chin for the cat's convenience, and smiled as he
hid his pointed face against her neck.

The tension that had held Ian static by
the doorway snapped and he came into the room and selected a chair, confident
and in command.

Jewels had dropped her head, and with her
face and hands concealed in the fall of her hair, was listening to her cell
phone messages with an expression of concentration. Four and a half days'
worth: she hadn't checked since Sunday night.

"Actually," Carel said,
"it's just as well you're here, Gyp. You see, Jewels has been accepted in service
by His Highness" — she nodded to Ian, as the cat bumped her chin hard with
the crown of his head — "and she needs training."

"How do you teach somebody to survive
in Faerie?"

Ian settled himself on one corner of the
sofa, not far from Jewels. "I can teach the lady that," he said, crossing
his legs and folding his hands. "But I cannot 'prentice her in mortal
magics, for I do not know them."

"And I do."

"Better than Moira, anyway,"
Carel said. "And Autumn hasn't a lot of interest in anything beyond meditation
— "

"I heard that!" floated from the
kitchen.

Carel smiled. The cat squirmed in her
arms, and she let him down. When Gypsy looked at Jewels, though, she was
frowning at her phone, and Geoff had his hand on her shoulder and was leaning
forward. She must have felt his gaze. "I have to call that cop," she
said. "He's left three messages."

"Peese?" Geoff said, with a
wince.

"War," she answered. They
grinned at each other, leaving Gypsy completely lost. "I'll call him in a minute.
I'm sorry, Gy-Gypsy?"

"Gyp," said Gypsy.

"Gyp," she echoed, with another
ghosty smile. "You're a magician?" I'm a Pagan," he said. "Shamanistic
tradition. I can teach you something, sure. If you can tell
me
something."

She leaned forward, swallowing, her hands
folded over the warm plastic of her phone. "I'll try."

He pointed to her forehead, blunt finger
and a bitten nail indicating the line of scars braided like a tiara across her
brow. "How'd you manage to get scarred up like that and
not
earn
any power of your own yet?"

Her chin went up, her hair shaken back
from her face, slipping behind the points of her much-pierced ears. "I
don't know," she said, blunt confession that pleased him.

We'll find out," Gypsy said, as the
phone rang. The landline, not anybody's cell.

Autumn dodged in from the kitchen with a
tea tray in both hands, and slid it onto the table beside the telephone as
Carel starting forward. "It's Lily," Gypsy and Carel said, in unison.

Autumn's hand paused over the handset. She
glared through the veil of her hair. "I
hate
it when you do
that."

Lily had something she wanted to talk
about—whatever it was, enough to make her voice flat with emotion —and didn't
seem deterred when Autumn told her the house was full of strangers. "I'll
be over as soon as I pick up my car," she said. "Want me to get a
couple of pizzas on the way? It'd do me good to be around people."

Autumn cast a jaundiced eye around the
room, as Jewels leaned toward Geoff and mouthed
You don't suppose she means
Lily Wakeman, do you?
"Pizza sounds like a great plan. Make sure you
get one veggie; I'm not sure everybody's a carnivore."

Lily laughed, as if Autumn's voice had
eased whatever it was weighing her down, and hung up. Autumn looked up to see
the slender boy with the eerie green eyes hovering at her elbow. Ian. "I
beg your pardon," he said, "I couldn't help but overhear. You saw a
unicorn?"

She nodded, setting the phone back on the
cradle. "I did."

Ian touched her elbow, lightly, leaning in
as if to catch the scent of some perfume she wasn't wearing. "I know a
Mage you should talk to. He knows a few things about unicorns."

Detective Smith said he needed to talk to
her as soon as possible, and that he'd cheerfully drive out of the city to do
it. Jewels, the back of her hand pressed to her mouth and the phone pressed to
her ear, its transparent lime-green plastic cover clinging like a kiss to her
cheek, hesitated longer than she should have. It was Thursday evening. He'd
think she'd been ignoring his calls for most of the week. She'd have to find an
excuse—or just plain tell him where she'd been.

She couldn't bring him to Carel's house.
And she needed an advantage, the advantage of home turf. It didn't matter how
nice
Smith was, how much of a relief it was to hear his musical voice on the
phone and not Detective Peese's nasal tenor. But—she checked the display on her
phone just as Detective Smith cleared his throat—but it was Thursday And there
was probably a bus to Springfield. If she couldn't convince somebody to drive
there.

"Have you ever heard of a place
called the Rathskeller?" she asked, ignoring Geoff's stare. "In Springfield?"

Don, thumb-punching on his PDA with
reckless speed, had not. But the girl knew the street address, and it was easy
enough to find the Web site and Google a map. "I'll be there at ten,"
he said. "I hope you'll recognize me.

The laugh that answered, though made
tenuous by the crackling mouthpiece of her phone, was more relaxed—more
mature—than he had expected. "You're hard to miss, Detective."

Ten o'clock—which left him with barely
enough time to shower, change into something that didn't look either slept in
or too conservative, collect his car, fight the last half of rush hour over
the Triborough Bridge, and start driving north, if he wanted to be there in
time to have a look around before committing to the arrangement.

He told the shift lieutenant where he was
going and why, filed his paperwork, arranged a midnight check-in, and hurried
back to his apartment, stopping at a coffee shop along the way.

The drive was no worse than it had to be,
the weather cooperating and the steady stream of headlights south and
taillights north dispersing slowly as he left Fairfield County. The highway
was featureless by night, broad lanes of well-maintained blacktop picked out in
reflective paint, and it took him less time than it seemed it should to reach
Hartford. Springfield was less than an hour up 91 after that.

It was a postage-stamp city, a skyline you
could take in at a glance, without detail or complexity. A cluster of a few
boxy curtain wall buildings and one old-fashioned stone office spire dwarfed
by its modern cousins lounged on a low bank of the broad, brown Connecticut
River, and once in its cluttered streets, Donall had no difficulty finding the
address, although it did take a few circles through the one-way corridors to
locate parking. He turned the collar of his leather trench coat up — he hadn't
worn it in a year and a half—and slid from behind the wheel into a chill night,
the tang of early winter frosting the sour scent of garbage.

The boots got worn more often. And were
more comfortable because of it; the coat strained across his shoulders. He
knew from the People passing out front that he was twenty years too old for this
place, but he was hoping he'd get made for a creepy guy trolling for
inappropriate women rather than an officer of the law. He checked the tuck of
his black turtleneck in the side window, squared his shoulders, and went to
meet his doom.

It was as loud as expected. He felt the
bass line through the sidewalk cement half a block away. The faded red and
yellow sign on the cinderblock front of the old warehouse advertised LAZER
FLASH. The ghosts of festive colors haunted its facade.

When Don followed Jewels' instructions and
walked around back, he found a loading dock with two-pipe steel railing up
either side of the stairs and along the length of the cement. Young people huddled
there, some skinny and some voluptuous, their hair spiked or ratted or allowed
to tumble in sheer ebony and carnelian waves. Embers glowed by their
fingertips: the smoking lounge. The breeze snaked through the reek of clove and
Don sneezed, climbing the stairs to enlist in the line.

The kids queuing were kids: he figured if
he started checking ID, he could probably collar half the freshman class of Springfield College. The bouncer
wad
checking—most of it fake or borrowed. Don had
his ready—NY driver's license, in the wallet without the shield—when he got up
there.

"Eight dollars," the bouncer
said, bored. Don had six inches' height on him, and the girl just before was waved
through without paying. But Don wasn't wearing a corset. He paid.

The main entrance seemed to be a sally
port just left of the big, rusted loading bay doors. A sign hung to his right,
hand-painted purple on black. A gleaming violet neon script capital R
illuminated it. RATHSKELLER.

"This must be the place," he
said to himself, and so he passed within.

In the darkness he stepped right, as if
the percussive wave of the music had brushed him out of the way. Alongside the
door, against the sealed loading bay shutter, where he could scope the place
for a minute or two before he walked out in it. His hand dipped into the pocket
or his jeans and found a cracked hard plastic case, from which he withdrew
custom-made earplugs.