Music to My Sorrow

by Mercedes Lackey

  "Come, friends, let us away," he told the others. "The hour grows late—and we have sweet music to make!"

  * * *

  Okay, so maybe hiding in the trunk hadn't been such a good idea, Eric thought to himself. But it was still better than a full-on magickal brawl with four of the Unseleighe Court, especially when Hosea and Ace could be killed at will and Magnus—as far as Eric knew—didn't have any way of fighting back.

  Of course, one good titanium crow-bar and their goose would have been cooked, but when he'd seen that Gabrevys hadn't been with their nightmare-riding pursuers—and remembered how feudal Elfhame Bete Noir had seemed—he'd played a hunch that these weren't exactly cutting-edge forward-thinking Unseleighe. That, powerful as they were, they were old—which meant just a bit set in their ways. Elves weren't big on creativity in the first place. Gabrevys might be able to come up with the idea of a Sidhe rock band of evil—he'd probably gotten the idea from a book—but unless he was on Fairgrove's restricted e-mail list, he wouldn't be current with the latest in nonferrous technology adaptations.

  Still. Four people crammed into a car trunk. . . .

  Of course, once they'd locked themselves into the trunk, the problem remained of getting out. . . .

  "I can't breathe," Magnus complained in an undertone.

  "If you can talk, you can breathe," Ace whispered back. But she sounded a little breathless herself.

  It was stuffy in here—stuffy, hot, and very, very cramped, even though the Coupe de Ville had a trunk about the size of some of the smaller New York City apartments that Eric had seen. The dent in the trunk hadn't helped matters any; it was pressing hard against Eric's left shoulder, and he was pretty sure it was going to leave a bruise.

  "Are they gone, do you think?" Hosea asked—with remarkable calm given the circumstances. Eric didn't know what all Jormin had done besides bang on the trunk: he did know that the car had rocked violently a couple of times and then settled sharply lower in a way that didn't bode well for the tires. "Ah cain see light around the edges of the trunk," Hosea added.

  "I think so," Eric said. "I'm pretty sure I heard them ride off. We can't stay in here forever, anyway."

  "You might be able to," Hosea said ruefully. "It's a bit of a tight fit for me."

  "You had to bring the damned banjo," Magnus groaned.

  "Hey—watch it!" Ace said. She sounded indignant rather than scared. Which was an improvement.

  "Okay, everybody, hold still," Eric said. "I'm going to try to get the trunk open."

  Eric was pretty sure he knew how sardines felt by the time he was done getting into position, and he didn't dare try a really high-powered spell, like the one he'd used to blow the roof off earlier. There was too much chance he'd just cook the lot of them.

  He felt around for the lock mechanism, and piece by piece, humming "Step By Step" under his breath, he made it trickle away, until there was nothing there but a hole in the trunk. Now he could see out, and—fortunately—a lot more fresh air could get in.

  Hosea was right. It was dawn.

  And shouldn't the trunk have sprung open?

  Eric pushed at it as best he could from his cramped position. It was almost impossible to get leverage, or, for that matter, move at all, with the four of them in here—it was just a good thing he'd changed back from armor to street clothes before they'd all piled in, or they'd never have managed it.

  But the trunk lid wasn't moving. Jormin's blow must have jammed it shut.

  "Stuck, is it?" Hosea said quietly.

  "Yeah," Eric said with a sigh. There was no point in concealing the obvious.

  "Anythin' you cain do?"

  "One thing." One spell he knew—one of the handiest—was to make an inanimate object "remember" its original condition. Kory used it, back in their digs in San Francisco, to help restore the old townhouse to its former Victorian glory. It could be used to make old things new—for a time, anyway, at least when he did it, since it seemed to work better for elves than it ever did for him. And like most spells, it had its converse—though, oddly enough, the effects of this one didn't wear off. He could hurry an object's natural aging span, making it break down and decay—or rust—in a matter of minutes. If he did that here, the car should corrode to the point that they could get out of the trunk.

  Of course, Margot would skin them all for destroying her ride. But that would be later.

  He really hated to destroy such a beautiful machine. For a moment he hesitated, hoping there was another way. But there wasn't—nothing safe enough to use at such close quarters for all of them.

  He'd better try it. Because just because Jormin and his pals had ridden off just now didn't mean they'd given up.

  Eric placed a hand against the inside lid of the trunk, letting his mind fill with music.

  Rust spread from his palm as if it were frost, and soon the air was filled with choking metallic dust—a side effect he hadn't anticipated. Eric closed his eyes tightly and held his breath, concentrating on the spell. His fingers sank into the suddenly rust-greasy metal, and he could feel Hosea adding his power and effort to the spell.

  There was a shuddering groan as the Cadillac sank further to the ground with a squeal of protest as something within the frame gave way, and at last the trunk lid flew up in a cloud of rust and decaying carpet. Coughing and choking, the four refugees clambered out.

  "Jesus," Magnus said comprehensively, staring at the car.

  The tires—which appeared to have previously melted to puddles—had decayed to dust, and the wheel-rims were bent and rusting. The car rested on what was left of its door-panels on the gravel, as the jolt that had freed them from the trunk had been the last of the suspension giving way.

  Both side-mirrors had fallen off. Every exposed bit of chrome that remained was pitted with green and brown corrosion. The roof, of course, had been torn off earlier that morning, and the twisted shears of tortured metal stood up like the stubs of decayed teeth. The headlights and tail-lights were shattered, as was every piece of glass and Bakelite in the cockpit. The (formerly) white leather seats were split and tattered, and had turned an ugly greenish-grey with age and mold. The stuffing and the springs were foaming out through the split and flaking leather like strange growths.

  But it was the car's metallic pink paint-job that had undergone the most bizarre transformation, and one that owed little to Eric's spell. Most of it was gone entirely, the bare metal beneath red with rust where it had not flaked away entirely. But where the paint still remained, it was a sort of soup-green, and had bubbled up as if it were diseased. It was almost as if someone had turned the idea of the other color inside-out.

  "Margot's going to kill you, Hosea," Ace said when she finally stopped coughing.

  "Ayah," Hosea agreed glumly.

  "Can you, like, fix it?" Magnus asked doubtfully. "We can't exactly walk out of here."

  Eric shook his head. "Not fast enough." Not at all. I don't think even Monster Garage could do anything with this car now. He concentrated for a moment. "But Lady Day's on her way. I think it's safe now. When she gets here, I can talk her into turning into something to get the four of us to a phone—or back to New York. And there's something else I need to do while we're waiting."

  For the first time since they'd opened the door out of the Grey Room Eric wasn't either running or fighting for his life. He dropped into mage-sight and took a look—a really good look—at the other three.

  Magnus looked perfectly normal—no sign of any lingering spells around him at all. Eric breathed a sigh of relief.

  But Ace and Hosea . . .

  Both of them shimmered, ever-so-faintly, with spellwork.

  Compared to these, the ones cast on his parents had been coarse and clumsy things. No wonder even Hosea hadn't noticed them. Eric stared at them intently: he needed to know what they were before he destroyed them, lest he do more damage.

  "What is it?" Hosea asked, seeing the intensity of his stare.

  "You've been b
espelled," Eric said absently, most of his attention still on the spell. "You and Ace both. It looks like Jormin's work—" There! He had it now—a compulsion, very subtle, to keep them both in the immediate area where it had been set. They'd do anything they thought they had to in order to fulfill it; in fact, if Eric weren't here to stop them, they'd probably start heading back to Atlantic City soon—coming up with some reason why that was a good idea and managing to forget all the reasons it wasn't. No wonder Ria wasn't already down here, guns blazing. They'd probably kept everything they'd known or suspected about Gabriel Horn to themselves, without knowing why they'd done it.

  Ace stared at him for a moment, then suddenly burst into tears. Hosea put a comforting arm around her.

  "You could of been a mite more tactful about that, Eric," the Ozark Bard said mildly.

  "I can fix it," Eric said quickly. "Not fix it, but . . . Don't worry. I can make it unravel."

  He filled his hands with the Flute of Air, and suddenly the misty clearing was filled with the pure spiraling mathematics of a Bach prelude. The notes seemed to coil round and round, describing golden spirals in the air, each one alone and only, making shining helixes in the air. They rose up like motes of light to his inner sight, and then began to settle slowly over Ace and Hosea.

  And everywhere they touched, a strand of the Unseleighe magick melted away.

  At last it was gone. Whatever spells had bound them against their will and knowledge bound them no longer.

  "What did it do?" Hosea asked, when Eric had stopped playing.

  "I think—I'm pretty sure—Jormin placed a geas on both of you to keep you from leaving the immediate area." Eric sent the Flute of Air back to where it came from. "It was good. Really good. You'd have to have a lot more experience in magick than you do to have known it was there, or that he was putting it on you. You didn't know about it, but unconsciously you'd do whatever you had to in order to stay there."

  "Includin' not callin' for help—when that would o' been the smartest thing to do," Hosea said in disgust.

  "Hey, if you'd been smart, bro and I would be zombies by now," Magnus said. "So it ended up being a good thing," He leaned back against the fender of the rusted Caddy. It promptly tore loose and dumped him onto the ground.

  "Serves you right," Ace said promptly. But she reached down and gave him her hand.

  "Hey," Kayla said from the side of the road. "Oh, shit—is that Margot's car?"

  * * *

  Get a dog and you'll never need an alarm clock again. Kayla reminded herself that it could have been worse.

  Brenda could have asked her to baby-sit a real kid for a weekend.

  Why couldn't Molly have been a cat? She'd had a vague idea that her Spring Break would be a time when she would actually get a chance to catch up on her sleep. What Brenda hadn't mentioned was that Molly would see no reason to change her morning schedule just because Kayla had the rare chance to sleep in. Molly was up bright and early—very early—to take care of a dog's morning needs (which meant that Kayla was up and dressed, since she couldn't very well hand Molly her leash and send her out by herself), after which Molly wanted breakfast, after which Molly wanted (you guessed it) another outing.

  After that, of course, the pug was perfectly happy to curl up again and snuggle and even go back to sleep for several hours, but by that time, like it or not, Kayla was wide awake. She'd never had that ability to just doze off whenever she felt like it.

  Still, it wasn't Molly's fault that Brenda was a (shudder) Morning Person. And Molly was so charming and full of fun that it was impossible to be mad at her, even when you were being awakened at oh-dark-thirty by a sloppy face full of wet pug kisses. How could you be angry with anything that could maintain that level of enthusiasm from the time she woke up to the time she went to sleep?

  But if she ever got a dog of her own, Kayla was going to make sure that the mutt understood that morning started at a reasonable hour—eight-thirty, say. Or maybe noon.

  On this particular morning, though, Molly hadn't had to wake her up. Kayla hadn't gotten much sleep, and she was pretty certain she wasn't the only one in the building suffering from the insomnia.

  Eric was still missing, and so was Magnus. And Lady Day was here, fretting, but unable to tell them why, and it was too much like the last time that had happened for Kayla's peace of mind. Ria had already checked all the hospitals, and Toni and Paul had checked out the "giant wolf" sightings near Gussie's school, but—frustratingly!—Toni had said the Guardians couldn't do anything more. Or at least, not as Guardians, and what they could do as Eric's friends was minimal.

  "It doesn't seem to be Guardian business, Kayla. I'm sorry," was all Toni could say, shrugging helplessly.

  At least the last phone call Ria'd had from Hosea, last night around seven, sounded as if there wasn't too much in the way of trouble going on down there—if Kayla knew Too Tall at all, he'd be back today to help look for Eric. Maybe he was already on the way back.

  Maybe he was already here, and looking.

  Not that there was any place to look for Eric.

  Which left Kayla to pace, and worry, spend a mostly sleepless night worrying about things she couldn't do anything about, and take Molly for an extra-long post-breakfast walk to relieve her nerves. Not for the first time, she wished her particular Talent was for something besides Healing. Finding, for instance. That would be pretty useful right now.

  She was just heading back toward the apartment along the street that bordered the small parking area behind Guardian House when she saw a sudden flare of headlights in the lot.

  That caught her attention; she made it her business to notice anything out of the ordinary in and around Guardian House. It was a little early for anyone to be leaving for work, and almost everyone took the bus or the subway anyway, since parking in New York was a nightmare. Maybe someone was taking an early weekend?

  No.

  There was only one bright-red motorcycle in the lot, and it was the one doing the moving. And there wasn't anyone on it.

  It was Lady Day. The elvensteed was going somewhere. Alone.

  Not a bloody chance.

  Without thinking twice, Kayla scooped Molly up under one arm and ran toward the bike. Lady Day was just starting to back out of her parking slot as Kayla vaulted into the saddle, holding the enthusiastically wriggling pug tightly against her chest. She didn't really want to bring Molly along on this adventure—excellent or otherwise—but she had no choice: she knew Lady Day wouldn't wait for her to put Molly back in the apartment. Lady Day might not want to let her come along—but Kayla wasn't going to take no for an answer.

  "Wherever you're going, girl, I'm going with you," Kayla said firmly. "If Eric needs you, he probably needs some reinforcements."

  Like she'd be much in the way of reinforcements. . . .

  At least Lady Day didn't try to buck her off. Well, the elvensteed had let Kayla ride her before. And if she was going where Eric was, odds were he'd need a Healer, like the last time he'd gone missing. She'd be of that much use, anyway.

  The bike turned onto the street and sped up, heading in the direction of the George Washington Bridge. Okay, I don't need to steer, so—Holding on to to Molly in case the idiot dog got the idea to try to jump off, and wishing she had a third hand, Kayla unstrapped Eric's spare helmet from the back of the bike and shoved it onto her head. Good thing the chin-strap had a Velcro fastener in addition to the buckle, because you couldn't buckle anything with just one hand. Fortunately she was already dressed for the weather—which meant gloves and boots and her leather jacket. She held on tightly to the handlebars with one hand and Molly with the other; the pug barked enthusiastically, obviously enjoying the ride.

  "I just hope we get there fast—and there's no tolls," Kayla said. She had her purse with her, slung crosswise over her shoulder, SOP in New York to deter purse-snatchers, but she wasn't sure how the toll-booth attendants would react to her furry passenger.

  She needn't ha
ve worried. There were toll-booths, but Lady Day didn't stop for them. Lady Day didn't stop for anything: traffic lights, yield signs, oncoming traffic. Kayla had no idea how fast they were going, but none of the other drivers seemed to notice them—a good thing, too, as she didn't think even all of Eric's elf-kenned gold could pay for the speeding tickets they should have gotten . . . not to mention driving through the toll-booths. But the alarms on the booths didn't even go off. It was as if they were ghosts.

  They crossed the bridge and headed into New Jersey. Kayla muttered a despairing curse when she realized that wherever Eric was, it was probably a lot farther away than Hoboken. Lady Day went faster.

  Then something really, really odd happened. The world itself stopped obeying the laws of physics as Kayla understood them. By the time they reached the Garden State Parkway, the outside world had become nothing more than a bright blur, whipping by literally too fast to be seen, like something out of an old science-fiction movie. There was a faint high humming in the air that seemed to waver up and down a note or two, monotonously, but other than that, an eerie silence.

  And instead of the blast of wind that she expected—that ought to be there, if she was riding on a motorcycle traveling as fast as this one had to be traveling—there was nothing more than a faint breeze.

  Magick. Eric had told her that the elvensteeds had some way of traveling fast and invisibly in the World Above. She'd believed him, but hadn't really thought about the mechanics of such a thing. It wasn't lightspeed, of course, but it sure seemed as if Einstein would have taken one look at what was happening and gone off to shoot himself.

  She didn't want to try stepping off to test how far the magick ran, though.

  And even Molly was quiet. Finally.

  After a few minutes of that—just as Kayla was starting to get used to traveling on Twilight Zone Motorways—the elvensteed began to slow. The world outside took on form. Nothing but trees—for an instant Kayla wondered if they'd gone Underhill, but the road was still here, so she guessed they hadn't. Lower New Jersey, then; outside of the industrial wasteland where the state was still rural and (so she'd heard) really pretty.