Whiskey and Water (9 page)

"There are thousands of wards. They
just don't work."

"At all?" A vein of excitement
gleamed in her voice.

"Enough." He shrugged,
disgusted, and kept his eyes on Carel as she selected one photo out of the half-dozen
or so and carried it to the window and daylight. "If you had any idea
what Faerie was, what it's done, you wouldn't be so eager to get down on the
ground and roll in it, kid.

"You have
your
magic, Matthew
Magus," the Merlin said. "It's easy for us to forget mundanity. And there
are worse things than Faerie in the world."

There was no shadow over her this time, no
scorch and hiss of the Dragon underlying her words. It didn't mean the Dragon
wasn't there; the Dragon was always there. That was what it meant to be the Merlin:
to comprehend the Dragon Whose Pearl Was the Heart of the World, to understand
the counsel of the selfish and violent mother of everything as the spoken word
rather than a mere savage trickle of instinct.

Matthew never let himself forget it.
"'What do we do?"

She glanced from him to the children and
tilted her head. A braid slipped over her ear. "Are you expected
home?"

Jewels glanced at Geoff. "We haven't
got anybody," she said. "Why?"

Carel showed her teeth. "Then no one
will miss you if you come with us to Faerie," she said, and a shock of joy
went through Jewels as hot and cold as liquor.

"Morgan?" Matthew asked.

Carel's senses weren't any more acute than
a normal woman's. But the Dragon smelled the fear rising cold and bittersweet
and appetizing through his coat, although it never showed in his expression.
"Scared of a little fire, Scarecrow? "

"I wasn't planning on a day trip to
Annwn."

The Merlin's lips pulled tighter.
"Not Morgan. Elaine." She reached for the phone. "But first,
I
have to call home and tell my girlfriend I'm missing dinner."

The Ballad of Thomas the
Rhymer

H
e was a gray cat with one white rear foot,
Rumpelstiltskin by name. A twenty-pounder, cougar-bodied, lean and soft, and
that one foot glimmered like a moth's wings in the half-dark as he picked his
way across a red and ivory carpet, intent on a single morning sunbeam that had
slipped between the drapes. He stalked the bright patch as he would have
stalked a mouse, not deigning to notice the three women and three men already
seated in or standing around the room.

Only two of them noticed him. One was
Christian, splendid and silent with his curled red hair and his eyes like a
cat's, green and hazel and tawny all at once, who leaned in the shadows beside
the fireplace. The second was Autumn, whose house and whose cat it was, and who
watched Rumpelstiltskin's stately progression as she closed her cell phone and
sighed.

Christian noticed that too, but Christian
noticed everything. He smiled at her with only the corners of his mouth and
eyes, shy commiseration. He cupped fine-boned hands around a steaming pottery
mug, and didn't speak a word.

"Carel?" Moira asked, her voice
bright with sympathy, and Autumn nodded. "That woman does not appreciate
you."

"Oh," Autumn said, "she
does."

"If she came to circle we'd be eight.
One more makes nine. It would be nice to have nine."

"If Lily showed up once in a
while." Jason, the high priest, crouched over a glass-topped coffee table teaching
tarot to a young woman by the decreasingly unusual name of Michael. He placed
another card, completing the cross, commencing the tower.

"Carel's busy supporting me in the
style to which I'd like to become accustomed." Autumn folded the phone and
replaced it in its pouch on the outside of her leather daypack. Her skirt slid
between her knees and as she tugged the layers of gold and violet cotton gauze
smooth she smiled around the irony of being unable to tell a house full of
pagans that her lover was
busy
because she was the Merlin.

"Wish I could find one of
those." Gary—
Gypsy,
he'd tell you—looked up from his seat behind a
card table in the corner. He'd laid silk scarves across its surface and was
methodically dipping crystals in springwater and wiping them dry before laying
each one on a scarf and winding it in two turns of insulating silk. He usually
wore flannel, ragged jeans, and unlaced boots, a red-piped navy down jacket
zipped over his belly and barrel chest when things grew cooler. But today in
honor of the holiday, his grizzled beard decorated a silver silk shirt and
neat black jeans tapered over black Frye boots.

A few strands of cut grass had dried onto
the heels; Autumn's house had a deep, sloped, narrow backyard with a grove of
white pine at the bottom. They'd raked the earth between the trees bare for the
bonfire — legal as long as it was "primarily a cooking fire," so
they'd roasted marshmallows, and apples and onions in tinfoil with maple syrup,
and the sharp garlic sausages that Gyp made himself—and held circle until
sunrise.

There were smudges under Gyp's eyes,
blue-black as bruises. Staying up all night wasn't as easy as it used to be,
although he comforted himself that they were all tired. Tired, but anticipating
a Denny's break-last once the ritual tools were packed away. Enough grease
could make up for a sleepless night. And Autumn made very good coffee.

First," Jason said to Gypsy, without
looking up from his cards, "become a lesbian." He rode the chuckles
with a half-hidden smile, black ponytail sliding over his shoulder as full of
rainbows as a raven's wing. He had a Jewish nose in a Grecian profile, and wore
his hair pulled back sharply because strangers asked if he was American Indian
when he did.

He was using the Thoth deck, bladed lines
and smoky colors, and Michael leaned forward to see the cards better. Straight
dark locks drifted in feathers across her cheek, but she kept her hands folded behind
her back, and her hair clipped clean at the nape of her neck revealed shoulder
blades moving like wings under her Trogdor the Burninator T-shirt. "What's
this one?" she said, with a bob of her pointed chin."The Ace of
Wands." Jason touched and straightened a corner of the card. "It
represents you in this case, and indicates a fiery youth, full of spirit and
passion. A generative, creative force. Also, you have a lot of court cards and
Major Arcana."

She watched his hands as he caressed the
cards. "Is that unusual? It's handy how they have the names or the little
. . . summaries on the bottom."

"One of the many nice things about
this deck." He touched an antelope-faced card, slick and webbed with
vein-blue symbols on a background the color of flesh. Ponderous horns spiraled
from the animal's head to the upper corners of the card. "The
Devil," Jason said. "And here's the Queen of Swords, the Queen of
Cups, the Empress, the Universe ..." He grinned and looked up, catching
her eye. "The Lovers."

Moira chuckled. "Going to bring him
by sometime, Michael?"

Michael blushed and leaned back, and
Rumpelstiltskin leaped up on the coffee table, scattering the cards. "And
sometimes the spirits of the house demand their due," Jason said wryly,
and stroked the cat's big wedge-shaped head before bending to pick a bent card
off the rug. It was the Magus, and he smoothed it before he swept the deck
together again. "Gyp, you hungry yet?"

Gypsy tied the last bundle of cloth and
crystals, and slipped it into his pouch. "Ready to eat," he admitted,
and pushed his chair back from the card table as he stood. "Pity Lily
couldn't make it."

"Halloween is a high Goth holiday
too," Michael said. "She does have other friends." She scrambled
up, crossed legs untangling with coltish speed, and turned to grab her
Windbreaker from the corner by the radiator.

Moira kicked Jason lightly on the thigh
with a green suede boot, and said to Michael. "Don't let him get under
your skin. He just likes to get a rise out of people."

Michael put her back in the corner and
slid her hand down the silky Thinsulate-lined tunnel of her sleeve. She
shrugged it across her shoulders and slipped her left hand into the other
sleeve. When she looked up, Christian was staring at her directly, silently,
sharing one of his half-grown smiles. It looked like an invitation, and so did
the lean angle of his body as he propped one elbow on the mantel, long legs crossed
in dark blue jeans. "You don't think she's avoiding you, Michael?"

Michael met his look frowning, with a
lifted chin, and held on until he glanced away. She zipped her jacket, the long
smooth sound of nylon teeth meshing like a paper sheer. Autumn, crouching to
spare her back when she swung her pack over her shoulder, saw the exchange, and
wondered why it left her uneasy, her palms clammy and cold.

The stare held no mysteries for Michael.
She stepped forward, her footsteps swinging like the stride of a big, angry
man, and headed for the door. "See you there," she called.

Christian at her heels, she left the rest
behind.

The house was a ramshackle old creature
with a shabby front porch, three concrete steps descending to a graveled walk
before the drive. Crisp air surrounded them, filled Michael's lungs as she
breathed deep, stepping to one side.

As the screen door banged shut behind
Christian, she turned and kneed him in the groin. He doubled and she swept his
legs out from under him, a hard well-placed kick that sent him sprawling off
the stoop. He fell silently but grunted when he hit, and rolled onto his back,
hands raised in front of him, bits of grass and gravel clinging to indented
palms.

Michael — " he said, warningly.

She paused on the second step, her broad
blade shining in her hand.

Stand up and fight," she said, the
words curling from her lips on wisps of breath. The grimace on her face was
almost a rictus. "Stand
up,
damn you."

Too late," he said, and scrambled
backward into a crouch. "Don't you think you'd better put your sword away
before somebody notices?"

She snorted. "Nobody notices an angel
unless he wants to be noticed.
Christian."

"He
notices." A short jerk of his thumb upward, and
then a wince, as he looked down and brushed sharp pebbles off the heel of his
hand. "Sparrows falling and blades of grass. And He doesn't like you getting
involved the way you used to anymore, does He?"

Michael descended the last two steps as if
sliding on a track, her blade glaring savage green-white as she cut air. The
hiss of collapsing vacuum followed the slash; the sword annihilated what it
touched.

"It might be worth it." She
leveled the blade at Christian. "Just this once. To make sure you leave
that girl alone, instead of twisting her around your devil's finger."

Christian blinked at the weapon, and
stood, dusting himself with careful palms, as casually as if Michael were
aiming a feather duster at him and not a blade composed of primal entropy.
"Lily
Liked
me," he said. "And you know what? That's your
problem, Michael. Nobody
likes
you. Nobody ever has. And I can teach Lily
to use her power. You wouldn't even permit her that."

"I have love," Michael said.
"And that's all I need. Or Lily needs."

"Just like your God." He stepped
back. She didn't follow, though the sword remained trained on him, unwavering.
"Just like Him to give potential and desire, and make the fulfillment a
sin. Bit of a practical joker, isn't He?

"Leave Lily Wakeman
alone."

Christian kissed the palm of his hand at
the angel. "Make me."

From the moment Matthew Magus emerged from
the police station with the two human children under his care, the stallion had
known he would not serve the purpose. He and the poet retreated to the green
and relative comfort of Central Park to seek another angle. Thomas—his cloak
folded now into his rucksack along with his flute—threw popcorn purchased with
vanishing Faerie silver to a motley crowd of pigeons while Whiskey stood, hands
in the pockets of his trousers, and watched the children and the carriages and
the pretty girls. The carriage horses knew him, and shied or nodded as their
natures indicated when they creaked and clopped past. The mortal men were less
aware, although more than one of the young women turned to look and flirt and
smile. "Could we not make haste, Whiskey?" the poet said, when he
couldn't stay silent another second. He cast a sidelong glance at Whiskey,
biting his lip to hide impatience that Murchaud would have seen through.
Murchaud would have brushed his hair off his brow and said,
'Tis only time,
and hast that to spare.

It wasn't the first time he'd known this
pain. But familiarity did not breed comfort now.
You will live,
he told
himself sternly.
You will live, and someday you will breathe again without
pain.

If it were a lie, he would have hated it
less. But blood would pay for a good deal of truth. And were he revenged on
Murchaud's killer, the eventual easing might not seem like such a betrayal,
when it came. Besides, they said, when you plot revenge, dig two graves. He
might not have to heal, if he was lucky.