Roadside Magic, Page 5

  More rain on the way. His nose untangled the various threads—no Unseelie had come this way. Clouds still massed in the north, but the thunder had retreated. No rain during the night, just breathless expectancy and combat teased by a chill wind. A note of juicy green—the Gates were open, the sap was rising, the weather warming rapidly.

  When his chin tipped back down, streetlamps guttering on either side of the highway as the hazy gray light strengthened, he realized where he was and where she was likely to be heading.

  The last time he’d been on Highway 4 was for repaving, long tar-melting afternoons, coming home to Daisy afterward reeking of asphalt, dirt, and a haze of mortal sweat. Not much could wring the salt from a sidhe, but that had come perilously close. The last summer before her death, a golden shimmering time. They’d talked about what they would do if she got pregnant, and she had quietly thrown away her birth control pills. They’d slept with the window open all that summer, the nights cool enough to bring her snuggling into his side, and he hadn’t slipped out to the trashwood behind their trailer to practice with the lance’s cold, shining length.

  The trouble with a half-sidhe memory was that it was vivid and unreliable, just like the sidhe themselves.

  He halted at the edge of a sea of concrete, scanning the truck stop. The diner, shabby but still obviously doing good business, was one of those low 1970s brick numbers, the big red letters on its roof probably rusted and pitted but still solid enough except for the missing E. Before dawn it would have been a welcome beacon, and the cold iron clustered around it a good way to halt or delay pursuit.

  Gallow kept to the edge of the lot, finally cutting in parallel to a chainlink fence separating the diner’s personal space from the diesel pumps and the long stretch of indifferently painted parking spots full of big rigs dozing in the freshness of morning. Behind the diner, two Dumpsters and a back door propped open to let out heat riding a clinking and steam-hiss cacophony of cooking. The morning rush would be well under way, a thread of burnt coffee and almost-burnt eggs, the good smell of bacon and the hot carbohydrate of pancakes on a grill.

  His gaze snagged on a rusted ladder. A fading spice-tang was Robin’s trail, almost washed away by cold iron and the tide-shifting of dawn.

  He coiled himself, ready to leap and catch the lower rungs even though the thing looked too rusted to bear any weight, but at that moment the diner’s back door banged open and a slim dark kid in a hairnet barged out, carrying two huge black trashbags. He stopped dead, and for a long, exotic moment Gallow found himself contemplating striking down a mortal, the marks painful-itching as they writhed.

  The boy cocked his head. “Hey,” he said. “Look, don’t go looking in there, man. Hang on.”

  He slung the bags down, and before Gallow could speak, the boy vanished back through the door. What the hell?

  Abruptly, Gallow realized he was unshaven, battle-filthy; his hair, though short, was wildly disarranged, and his coat much-mended along one side, as well as soaked with ditchwater and other, less salubrious fluids.

  The idea that maybe the kid thought he was a homeless scrounger intent on the Dumpster’s treasures actually wrung a laugh out of him, and the urge to let the lance free and strike retreated. It reminded him of leaving Summer, having to learn the ways of the mortal world again, from the faster cars to the looser manners.

  Jeremiah was just about to leap, vanishing onto the roof, when the kid appeared again, this time carrying a white Styrofoam rectangle. Balanced atop it was another white paper shape, this one steaming, and he blithely edged up the narrow space between the Dumpster and the chainlink to offer both to Gallow with a small, tired smile. “Here, man.” A light tenor voice, nothing in the words but gentle goodwill.

  The steam was from coffee, and the smell from the rectangle was heavenly, if heaven ever passed out greasy-spoon breakfasts. Jeremiah stood, his jaw almost ajar, and the kid turned back to his garbage bags. He heaved them both into the Dumpster with practiced efficiency, tipped Gallow a wink, and stepped aside, digging in his pocket. “You better eat before it gets cold.”

  Gallow found his voice. “You’re kind, young one.” Had he even forgotten how to speak like one of them, in just a few days?

  It was so damnably easy to slip back into the sidhe manner of speaking. And fighting, and running.

  And everything else.

  “Yeah, well, gotta do what you can.” The kid brought out a battered pack of Marlboros, tapped one up, and lit it. His hands were chapped and water-wrinkled. A dishwasher, then, low man on the diner totem pole. “Go ahead, eat. You can sit on that box.”

  The box was a wooden crate, and Jeremiah lowered himself gingerly. The coffee was strong at least, and the kid had tossed a plastic fork and pats of real butter in with a stack of pancakes. There were scrambled eggs, too, and bacon.

  It reminded him of Robin in his kitchen, offering a plate with a shy smile the morning after he had fought a plagued Unseelie knight.

  He’d also lost the habit of mortal hunger, but he ate. It wasn’t polite to refuse such a gift, offered so frankly. Had this kid been kind to a ragged little bird, too?

  Companionable silence descended on the almost-alleyway. Jeremiah mopped up melted butter with the last of the pancakes, barely tasting it. The kid finished his cigarette and field-stripped it, flicking the filter through the chainlink fence. He held the Dumpster lid up so Gallow could toss the Styrofoam, and nodded, briskly. “Be careful, okay? Some of the guys around here, they like to beat up dudes for fun.”

  “Have they ever beaten you up?”

  A broad white smile. “Nah, man, I’m too quick. Plus Natty, she owns this place, she gives ’em hell if they mess with her help. She don’t like guys hanging out behind here, though. I’ll get in trouble.”

  “I’ll be gone in a few moments.” Gallow hesitated. “How may I repay you, young one?”

  “No worries, man, just take care.”

  “Wait.” Gallow offered his hand. “Shake. You’re an honorable man.”

  The smile widened, and his grip was firm. Chantment tingled under Jeremiah’s palm, and a brief sparkle of gold outlined the kid as he vanished back inside, the heavy door slamming. Kind, but taking no chances. Frail mortal flesh, for all its firmness.

  Not so long ago, he’d seen Robin Ragged toss a coin into a violin player’s open case, and she’d thought he wanted to chide her for kindness—or that he’d assume she would do the young violinist some ill. What would she have said if she’d seen this?

  He might have been kind to her, Gallow told himself, rolling his shoulders under the weight of his tattered coat. That’s a good enough reason. He gathered himself and leapt, the ladder almost wrenching itself free of the bricks under his weight, but he was already on the roof by the time it finished groaning.

  She had tarried here, among the struts and supports, but she was gone.

  A few moments later, he was, too.

  SILENT LUCK

  11

  Mike Ramirez left work with a spring in his step, even though the dawn shift was the worst. Bill, the walrus-sized white-clad bigot of a cook, was always in a nasty temper, Natty wasn’t in the office to keep an eye on things, and the waitresses were fractious as cats during a windstorm. Bussing and washing for all of them was pretty much one serving of thankless shit after another, but he was blessed with a naturally sunny disposition and did his best.

  He didn’t notice the faint tracery of golden glitter on his hand, sinking into his dishwater-raw skin. He caught the 75 and made it to Saxon County Community College early, managing to stay awake through four classes, and aced two pop quizzes despite being exhausted. Coffee and sheer will kept him upright, and when he got home he handed over the day’s tip-in to his stout, fiercely devoted mother and fell into bed, listening to the song of her telenovelas through the thin wall.

  He was up at 11 p.m. to catch the bus back out to Natty’s diner that day, and when he walked in, Natty, her graying hair scraped back in
a bun, buttonholed him: He was promoted. The cantankerous Bill had suffered a meltdown and quit, as usual, but this time Natty wasn’t going to hire him back. “You’re easier to squeeze a day’s work out of,” she told Ramirez, and handed him a stack of fresh white aprons. “Get in there and get cooking.”

  Happily, he’d spent long enough watching to know what to do, and even though the food was a bit slow, he didn’t burn anything or turn over a wrong order all day. The good luck held through a solid week, and by the end of it he was comfortable around the grill, beginning to get faster, and whistling while he worked.

  It meant better hours, better tip-in, much better pay, and benefits as well. A stroke of luck, and Mike’s classes got a lot easier since he was able to get some sleep. When he finally graduated a year later, he lucked into a med school scholarship, and his mother had lost the tightness around her mouth since they’d manage to save a little. Then, just when things seemed like they were going to be hard but okay, his absent, alcoholic father finally kicked the bucket, and much to Señora Ramirez’s surprise, there was a life insurance policy the cabron had somehow kept the premiums current on, one final gesture from the otherwise useless man. She thanked God with novenas burning night and day, and Mike crossed himself whenever he thought about it.

  He barely remembered the green-eyed stranger that morning behind Natty’s diner. That was the greatest—and most silent—luck of all.

  HIS FILL

  12

  Crunch. Snap. To break the neck, to sink the teeth in—simple pleasures indeed. A puff of feathers, a frantic heart pounding inside a light-boned chest, and he bit the head from the pigeon with a satisfying snap of his white, white teeth.

  The pixies fluttered around him, tiny dots of green-yellow, their wings buzzing and chiming. They made a game of it, flickering before night-running rats, leading them on with bursts of scent and little movements. The rats were canny, though, and grew more difficult after two or three had lost their little lives.

  Once he could crawl the pixies guided him to nests where drowsy pigeons cooed softly at one another, unwaking even when his fingers deftly snatched them from warmth and safety.

  Sometimes he grabbed for the pixies, but they scattered, too quick for his clutching fingers, even if they did have extra joints. Far finer than human paws, but still too slow.

  It didn’t matter. The danger of true death was past. He was too old to be Twisted past recovery.

  Fortunately, he liked hunting. Soon the pixies fluttered around him as he unfolded, steam rising in fine traceries from pale, naked skin. He glowed in the predawn hush, nacreous as any newborn thing, and frowned slightly.

  The little flittering things darted close as he whispered, coaxingly, telling them what he wanted. They spread through the Veil, winking out and winking back, their tiny brains losing the thread as soon as they left him.

  He snarled, halfheartedly, picking dry feathers from between his teeth. They ached, poking through red gums, each bit of bone he ingested feeding his own skeleton. Needed more, and it was near dawn. Before the mortal sun rose, he had a certain leeway. Once its golden nail pierced the sky, his form would be set, and he was still weakened.

  The iron burned his bare skin everywhere it touched as he half-fell down the fire escape, displeasure hissing between his lips. A filthy alley greeted his bruised and torn feet; he slip-stumbled along, away from the rooftops and their hidden nests.

  More, he needed more.

  At certain hours, a mortal city takes no notice of a naked man, even one pearly-glowing and sharptooth. He can weave along, flinching and hissing, through curiously deserted streets, keeping to shadows and stepping far more heavily than was his wont before freezing, his high-peaked ears twitching.

  They have, those fine ears, caught a sound. A slight cough, air escaping diseased lungs.

  A homeless mortal, curled in a ratty sleeping bag, dozing before cruel dawn arose. Perhaps he had congratulated himself, this man, on finding a lonely place to sleep, free of passing feet and the bright lights, or the revolving, garish blue and red of the police. Move along, old man, can’t sleep here. Perhaps he had nipped from a bottle before stretching out, a faint alcoholic rose blooming to take the edge from the cold, sharp night. The cardboard under his sleeping bag was dry enough; above, Dalroyle Place soared, keeping its own secrets. Here at the back, the Dumpsters hid him from view, and perhaps he knew that in the morning the restaurant on the bottom floor would throw something edible into the bins.

  Softly, stealthily, the naked figure crept toward the sleeping mortal. The pixies, their chiming growing agitated, hung back, some of them flushing red in anticipation.

  Crunch.

  Sleep-mazed and witless, the mortal still almost fought his attacker off, but the pixies descended, tiny sharp teeth nipping, their fingers yanking his hair, stabbing for his eyes with sewing-needle blades. A nuzzling at his throat, a hot gush, and the mortal man knew no more.

  The naked boy settled to his feast, and the pixies crept over flesh-hill and vein-valley, biting what they could. There was an hour until dawn’s rising, but they needed hunt no further.

  Grinning, humming to himself, the naked boy ate his fill.

  A LOVER’S KNOT

  13

  She should not have waited. Or she should not be here now, in this new-built suburb. The houses were large clumps of still-pristine siding in bland creamy colors, the trees spindly in tiny circles of beauty bark, each driveway wide and welcoming and precisely the same as every other. The streets had long, pretty names—wildwood and marchblossom and azalea. The streets were wider than average, too, their pavement black as sin and uncracked.

  The only house that was different . . . well.

  Nothing looked wrong. Oh, the yard was a little shaggy, but someone could have forgotten to mow over a weekend. It was the tree in the front yard, a young birch in a carefully cut hole in the turf, standing straight and tall and in exuberant leaf where every other sapling was still barely budded, that brought Robin to a halt.

  They’ve been here.

  She peered around a holly-hedge caught in scrawny adolescence, her heart pounding and her mouth dry. No. Oh, no.

  Were they still inside? The sun had just cleared the horizon—had they come with the dawn?

  Leave. Go away. If they’ve been here, nothing you want is inside that house.

  She hesitated. It would be best to flee, lose herself in the mortal world for as long as she could.

  But . . . she had to know.

  She’d visited this place twice before, once to simply stare from the rooftop of the empty, for-sale structure across from it, and once in the middle of the night, using the lightfoot to climb like a thief and peer into windows. A mother and father, slumbering peacefully in a king-sized bed, the woman’s face whole and serene, the man’s arm over her and his nose buried in her hair. Robin had seen an echo of a boy’s face in the mother’s sleeping smile, and the father’s hair was a gold she knew from stroking a child’s head as he ate his bread and honey in a dusty nursery, in the very heart of Summer’s realm.

  Robin-mama! he would crow, and run through the orchard heedless of pitfalls, with Robin by his side. She fed him, rocked him, and the only time she herself slept dreamlessly was in her narrow bed, with Sean’s weight beside her reminding her of another child, blithe laughing Daisy.

  During the long, fragrant Summer dusks, she would take him to the narrow casement and teach him the names of the constellations, so different from the pale mortal stars. Time for bed, Sean.

  Oh, please, one more, what’s that one? And that?

  Dead now, caught in a game much too large for him, turned to amber and shattered on a marble floor. Puck’s hungry grin as the statue toppled, and underneath it all the small sound of a half-mortal heart cracking.

  Her thieving night visit had also taken her to a different window. She’d peered in and seen a familiar tousled wheat-gold head, and stared long enough for the glamour
to thin, sensing her attention. The changeling sleeping in Sean’s bed looked well cared for, and child-plump. One of its little paws stretched out from under the covers, and she’d blinked, carefully, seeing the vestigial sixth finger under the mask of seeming.

  A placeholder in the mortal realm, and how often had she thought of returning little Sean and bringing the changeling back into Summer? Or simply letting it roam free for the childcatchers to net? Sometimes a dreaming child, an especially blessed one, slipped back through the Veil. None might suspect Robin had taken a hand in affairs.

  But she hadn’t. A greedy little sidhe, she had kept him. Just one more day . . . what harm can one more day do?

  None, until Summer had perhaps noticed how Robin cared for the little mortal.

  Robin found herself clutching a holly branch, the plant reverberating as she trembled, the leaves prickling defensively as best they could. She let go, with a whispered apology, and brushed at the supple stem. A word of the Old Language, a chantment taking shape, and now any fool could see another of Summer’s ilk had stood here as well. The holly stretched, whispering back to her, and Robin tilted her russet head.

  How long ago?

  Trees didn’t count time the way mortals did, or even sidhe. Still, its memory was very fresh, of waking partly and hearing a distant song it yearned for with bole and branch. Then night, the time of darkness and soft stretching.

  Yesterday. The childcatchers had been here only yesterday.

  Robin brushed her hands together, though the holly had not loosed any sap. Of course they had come to take the changeling. Unwinter’s attack would have done much damage; they would be retrieving every nameless placeholder they could, to bring to Summer’s white hand and the wicked-sharp flint knife.