Whiskey and Water (7 page)

Matthew doesn't want help," he said,
brow furrowing. "Categorically. The body was very messy, and I'd say it's
definitely a Fae murder. You can't talk to the mayor's office and try to get
the turnover expedited?"

"The mayor's a Republican," she
said. "He doesn't owe me any favors. He'll want to solve the crime in
this jurisdiction if he can — "

Can't we use that?" Christian
finished the pastry in a few more bites and licked his fingers clean. "A Faerie
crime and a cover-up ... if we wanted to start turning public opinion against
them again, it could be useful."

We have to be careful," she answered.
She poured more coffee and fussed with it, but didn't drink. "Fear gives
them strength. Any kind of belief and awareness makes them . . . more."

Then how do we fight them?" Jane
said, "Last time, we starved them out. And they are still weak from that,
but we haven't another four hundred years to spare. The Dragon unchained is a
problem, but we've still warded our cities well enough to make them very
uncomfortable. And we
can
exact a price for their arrogance." She
shook her head. "If it was a Fae murder. If Elaine does not deal with it
herself."

"Jane," Christian said softly,
"she's not your daughter anymore. You can't expect —

"Oh, what do you know about it?"
She was on her feet before she realized it. Still spry for an old lady.
"What the hell do you know about it, Christie?"

He shrugged, and reached for another
pastry. "Not enough, it seems.

This free Will

T
he man who'd found Althea's body sat on the back of a
horseshoe-shaped chair, a cell phone pressed to his ear, watching Geoff over
the tops of wire-rimmed spectacles and nibbling on the nail of his left thumb.
He was bare-chested under the gaudy coat, patterns of ink stark on his pale
skin, but Geoff didn't think it was a costume, exactly. Nor did he think the
appraising glances were a proposition. So he looked back calmly and waited for
the call to end, eavesdropping shamelessly. "Christian," the man
said, and then something Geoff didn't quite catch. "No, I don't need
help. Or bail. Please tell Jane her assistance isn't required. I'll handle it
myself—no, I do not care to speak with her."

The tattooed man flipped the cell closed,
something awkward about the method that Geoff didn't understand until he took
the phone from his right hand with his left and the right one stayed curved
into a claw. He stuffed the gray metal phone into the pocket of his jeans and
stood, just waiting, dark eyes incongruous under all that fair hair, as if he
expected Geoffrey to come to him. He didn't say anything. He held out his hand,
the right one, crooked inside his black glove.

Geoffrey got up from the mustard-colored
chair and went. He blinked, surprised to find his feet had carried him all the
way across the checkerboard floor. The blond man's eyes
were
dark, brown
as bottles behind glare-proof glasses, with a sharp kind of knowing gleaming at
the bottom of them—a very long way down, as if light shone sideways through the
irises. "I'm Matthew," he said. "You're —Geoffrey? And you don't
like blood — "

"You're one of them," Geoff
said, swallowing hard enough to sting his throat.

"No," Matthew said. "I'm
one of
us."

Geoffrey stepped back, fighting now, magic
drawing tight around him: the strands of a spider's web on a struggling fly.
Geoffrey's power was ignorant —reflexive—but it was real. It flickered up the
strings of Matthew's control, trembling and ineffectual, the strength under it
un-leveraged. Matthew used a touch of mesmerism, put his soul and his power
into his eyes and waited for the boy to stop struggling.

The girl had died on Matthew's watch. Had
died due to his negligence. She was his failure. Crippled magic and a crippled
hand were not excuses.

He was angry.

Furious, with a kind of cold rational
wrath that left him in a limpid state of focus. He'd come to rely on Faerie's
gratitude, he realized. He'd pulled off his rings and turned his back on his
responsibilities, and it had been stupid,
stupid.

Unforgivably so. Because the conscience of
a Faerie was as reliable as the conscience of a shark. Althea Benning had paid
the price for his arrogance. For his complacency.

And he had a long, long way to go to atone
for that.

"I'm not Otherkin," Geoff said,
his voice shivering. He raised both hands. Matthew did not move. "That's
Jewels. And Althea. They're the ones who want to be kissed by Faeries — "

"Nobody wants to be kissed by
Faeries," Matthew said—a painful lie, a falsehood that chipped away at his
strength. Faerie magic, like Faerie gold, was based on glamourie and bindings,
half-truths and misrepresentations and outright skullduggery. Matthew's magic
was opportunistic, but it relied for its power on the naming of names and the
knowledge of essences. To tell a knowing lie was to undermine the fabric, warp
and weft of his power. And he had known one person who very much had wanted to
be kissed by Faeries. Matthew had paid more than passing consideration to it
himself, when it came to one Fae in particular.

"You don't have to tell
me
that,
man." Geoff shivered harder, dropping his hands to tug his zipper edges
together. He hugged his elbows to his sides. The gesture pressed skin-warmed
air away from the coat, spreading the scent of leather. "There's nothing
Faerie's got I want, you know? But they've got their fantasies."

Matthew knew. "But you're with
Jewels."

"Yeah," he said, and turned his
head, because Matthew's power held his body. "I'm with Jewels. I don't
like blood either, you're right. But I'm with Jewels."

A cryptic statement, and Matthew would
have ferreted after it, but he caught a hitch in his new acquaintance's
breathing, and followed the direction of his gaze. The girl in the gray sweater
had paused in a slip of light between the door and the doorframe; illuminated,
she was positively translucent. Pale-colored markings followed the scars along
her hairline: a tiara of knots, wrought in dye and pain. "Jewels,"
Matthew said, tasting it, and let the young man go to her.

He'd seen a body like Althea's before.
Seven years before, when he hadn't stopped Elaine Andraste, Seeker of the
Daoine Sidhe and the daughter of his archmage, Jane Andraste, from carrying off
a part-Fae whore. The Seeker's familiar had killed and partially eaten a man in
the process.

But there hadn't been a Seeker in New York
in seven years, and Elaine wasn't Elaine anymore; she was the Queen of the
Faeries. Matthew wiped the sweat from his left hand onto his jeans, feeling the
stiffness of dried blood in the fabric, and followed Geoffrey across the room.

Geoffrey pulled Jewels into his arms. She
made it look like he was comforting her, but his hands shook, one on her hip
and one in her hair. She leaned close, pressed against warmth, sliding her
hands under his jacket and the untucked tail of his shirt. His breath ruffled
her hair. His skin was firm and warm.

They're letting us go," she said,
when his grip eased and she could speak. "We can go home. You have your
train ticket?"

He nodded and gave her one last squeeze
and stepped back, breathing carefully. "Who's going to call Althea's
mom?"

"They already did," Matthew
supplied, when Jewels hesitated. "The police. They had somebody sent to
her house."

Neither one thought to ask how he knew it.
Geoffrey looked down at his knuckles and cleared his throat once. "We
should — "

"God, her mom will ..." They
shared a look that was meant to exclude Matthew and failed.

Matthew stepped forward, placing the pressure
of his presence on the conversation. Jewels glanced at him first.
"Look," he said. "I've got to drive up to UConn anyway. Why
don't I drop you? It'll be faster than the train, and I'll buy you both
breakfast."

It would be stupid to accept, of course.

Jewels looked him in the eyes, her own
cool as topaz, and nodded. "What are you doing at UConn?" "I'm
going to talk to Merlin the Magician about what killed your friend. Do you want
to come along?"

Morgan le Fey, once-Queen of Gore and
Cornwall, stood in the grand entry to the court of the Daoine Sidhe with her
wolfhounds at her side. The three of them made a splash of brightness—crimson, silver,
indigo — against checkerboard flagstones, and the red dog and the silver bitch
crouched low, unworried to be waiting.

Morgan wasn't worried, either, or
impatient. She was as calm as the golden stones rising story on story overhead,
the high echoing spaces of the reception hall, the ancient shoe-worn flags
scattered with sweet rushes underfoot.

She was old enough to know how to wait.

And truthfully, she hadn't been waiting
long. She slid flat hands into the hip pockets of her jeans and leaned back on
the heels of her boots, tilting her head to stretch out her neck and shoulders.
Sunlight tumbled in spectral fragments through the vaulted crystal overhead, a
brilliance the Mebd would never have permitted, in her later, sadder days.

But the Mebd was Queen here no longer, and
had not been for seven mortal years, which could be a day or a lifetime in
Faerie. And the new Queen crossing to Morgan wore ivory and silver, a gown beaded
from collar to hem in flashing crystal, Around her neck like a fur collar, a
warm shadow furled and unfurled immaterial wings. The creature, named Gharne,
was lithe and skittish, and he raised his barbed head to greet Morgan.

Rushes slid under the Queen's train,
dragged into chevrons like a wake behind a ship, and the herbs and flower
petals strewn among them fluttered up and drifted aside: pansy, rose, and rue.

Morgan crossed her feet and made a
curtsey. Graceless in jeans, but she was past caring for such things, and she
had come as she was bid. The Queen wouldn't care if she wore a glamourie.

"Grandmother," the Queen said,
and pushed Morgan's wind-tangled hair behind her ear to kiss her cheek.

"Elaine," Morgan said. The Queen
smiled slightly. It wasn't her name any longer, but that didn't stop Morgan
using it. The witch had known some others who made the same bargain—a fact that
was much on her mind today—and selling the power in a name didn't remove the
need to have something with which to turn a person's head in a crowded room.
"I come as I am bid."

"Then sit to tea."

The Mebd would have had courtiers on all
sides, except on those occasions when she roamed the halls of her palace by
night and alone, and no one dared come to her. This Queen was a solitary soul,
a thing that both grieved Morgan and eased her.

But then Morgan caught a glimpse of the
page Wolvesbane, almost out of sight and just within hearing of the clap of
Elaine's hands, and hid her grin behind the fall of hair that was tangled
strands of red and gray and gold. Her dogs paced them, compact feet rustling on
herbs and nails clicking on stone. "What did you wish to know?"

The Queen beckoned her to a side table,
and with her own hands lifted fistfuls of flowers from a shallow silver tray,
leaving the water behind. She blew across it, and the rippled surface
smoothed. "Watch," she said, and passed her hand over.

A white horse splotched with black
appeared, a blond man in a bard's cloak on his back. Morgan recognized them
both.

The Queen turned from her improvised
mirror, her arms held wide so the embroidered ivory silk of her sleeves would
swing clear, pearls and diamonds whispering among the dark strands of her hair.
The locks caught and cobwebbed across her shoulders as she raised a hand and
made a loose fist. She wore no braids and no bindings, just the jewels and the
chains. "You know him?"

"Intimately," Morgan said.
"His name was Christopher Marlowe."

"Yes."

Then Morgan fell silent as the Queen
brought her onto a broad patio over the garden. She stood for a moment and
watched her granddaughter fuss with the tea things, her dark head bent, nearly
black hair netting in soft locks all around her face. The Queen of the Daoine
Sidhe was not a pretty woman, with her peaked handsome nose and her hollow
cheeks, but her gray-green eyes were bright as river rocks when she glanced up.
"The author of
Dr. Faustus.
The same one, I take it?"

"The Fae have a love for poets."
Morgan shrugged. She folded her arms over her chest, pressing shirt buttons
into her skin, and looked out over the gardens. The dogs flopped on the marble
steps, soaking in the sun, the old bitch grunting a little as she found a
comfortable hollow. "How is Ian, Elaine?"

"Well enough. He's with Cairbre often
now. He still mourns Hope." The Queen seated herself without waiting for
assistance, and gestured Morgan into a chair opposite. She was the scandal of
the court, pouring tea and passing cookies with her own long brown hands.
"You don't want to talk about this Marlowe."

Morgan shrugged. "It's old history.
He went to Hell, not as the tithe but adjunct to it. He was my lover — "

"Who hasn't been?" Arch, but not
disapproving. A cup rattled on the saucer as she handed them to Morgan.