She hesitated briefly. “I know my timing sucks, but there’s really no good time for a conversation like—”
“GO!”
Meggy jumped as if I’d struck her, but she composed herself and jutted her chin. “Oh, that’s really mature. Going to throw a tantrum?”
By then, even the discomfort in my hands had faded beside the fire burning through me. “Meg,” I said through gritted teeth, “if you do not leave, I will not be responsible for what happens.”
She opened her mouth, but whatever she was planning to say died unuttered. I have no idea what I looked like in that moment, but I saw fear and anger and hurt crossing and re-crossing her face in waves, and for once, I made no move to comfort her. Her mouth snapped closed, and she left me without another word.
And when the pounding in my ears grew louder than her running footsteps, I ripped open a gate and stormed into the wilderness before I killed someone.
For all its inhabitants’ squabbling over choice bits of land, Faerie is overwhelmingly a wild place, a land of jagged mountains and tangled forests and wide savannahs and deep valleys where the days are short and the moon rises late. Any of this land could be magically terraformed, but few put in the effort, preferring to spend their time fighting with their neighbors and jockeying for position in the ancient social webs I’ll probably never fully comprehend. But the general apathy for expansion left me with a high, bare-topped range perhaps a hundred miles to the northeast of my palace, a perfect place to throw fire and shatter boulders until my rage was spent.
I don’t remember much about that afternoon besides the overwhelming need to destroy. If there was a sunset, I can’t say; a thunderstorm kicked up at some point, perhaps the first in centuries—perhaps the first ever, given Faerie’s typical weather patterns—and whether I triggered it unconsciously or the realm just tried to contain the ring of burning debris with which I’d surrounded myself, I may never know. But at some point that night, as lightning flickered in the east, I heard the deep thump of giant wings beating and looked up through the pouring rain as Georgie came in for a landing. She gripped the wet rock like a pro, then looked over her shoulder as the figure astride her back slipped off and made his way toward my circle of fire with the awkward gait of one who’s ridden hard and long and still feels a beast beneath him. The man’s features resolved into Joey’s—his light hair slicked black with the rain that beaded on his leather motorcycle jacket, his brown eyes squinting against the firelight and the blowing storm, his broad hands open and empty, held out for balance on the slick stone. I watched as he crossed the ruined pass between us, and then he paused outside the fire and regarded me as I shook inside my makeshift fortress, spent and soaked and chilling.
Joey shoved his hands into his jacket and made a face. “Chicks, man.”
I don’t know when—or if—I opened the ring for him. He may have simply stridden through the fire, too drenched to burn. But my next memory is of the smell of the wet leather against my face and Joey’s arms holding me up, and I was shaking with something that wasn’t the cold.
I wept on that mountain as I hadn’t wept in lifetimes, and when I was empty and numb, Joey was still patting my back as Étaín had done when I was young and overwhelmed, offering nothing but silent support. When my breathing slowed, I pulled away from him and extinguished the blaze, too drained at that moment to even be ashamed of my show of weakness. Joey waited while I pulled myself together and the rain began to slack off, and then I turned to him with a sigh. “Word spread already, I take it.”
“Val might have mentioned something to a few select individuals,” he replied, brushing the rain from his face. “I thought you might want some company.”
“Feeling particularly suicidal, were we?”
“Nope. But I do remember bits and pieces of the two-day bender I went on with my freshman roommates after my high-school girlfriend, who I was pretty much convinced I was going to marry, decided she loved someone else. And no,” he added with a smirk, “she didn’t drive me into the arms of Mother Church. She did drive me to blacking out in my own vomit on the bathroom floor of the one bar in town that would serve minors—which was about as classy a joint as it sounds. I mean, yeah, technically, the blackout was my own damn fault,” he allowed, “but I wouldn’t have been slamming shots of Jose Cuervo if I hadn’t thought my life was over. Oh, and once I woke up,” he continued, rolling his eyes, “by which I mean once my buddies rolled me out of my puke so I wouldn’t choke to death and I came to enough to figure out how to stand again, I picked a fight with a linebacker who was slightly less inebriated and ended up at University Health with three broken ribs, a dislocated shoulder, and a blood-alcohol level approaching point-two-five.”
“You came all this way to get me drunk?”
“Nah, I figured you could handle that on your own. Just thought you might need someone to pull you off the bathroom floor.”
“Yeah,” I muttered, feeling pain begin to return to my wounded hands. “Yeah, I suppose. Thanks, kid.”
“No sweat.” He kept his distance, as if the last few minutes had never passed between us. “Coming home tonight?”
I looked around at what little I could see in the dark of my burned and blasted surroundings. “I probably should, shouldn’t I?”
“I think I speak for all of us involved in this Gray Lands excursion when I say I’d feel better if you were rested and on your game when we get there.” He adjusted his jacket, dumping a little puddle that had pooled in a deep wrinkle. “And I know this horse is long since out of the barn, but is there any chance you could whip up an umbrella?”
Within a minute, the rain had petered out to a thick mist, which even then was beginning to break into patches of stars overhead. “Will that do?”
“That was my other suggestion,” he replied, then cocked his head toward the waiting dragon. “Georgie says she can carry two if you want to go the long way back.”
“No need.” I stood there for a moment, dripping in the dissipating fog, then recalled where I’d last seen Joey. “How are the ribs?”
“Good as new,” he said, sounding nonplussed. “Remind me to list Helen and Toula as my primary care providers on my company insurance, eh?” He smiled briefly at his own joke, and then, sobering, he asked, “Are we okay?”
“We?”
“You and me. After…you know?”
“Doran?” I finished for him. “Yes.” I took a few steps toward the drop and stared out at the night-shrouded peaks rising below us, trying not to see my brother choking on blood at my feet. “Why’d you do it, Joey?”
“Because I knew you couldn’t, and it needed to be done. Someone had to handle it.” I heard his boots slap the rock behind me as he joined me at the end of the ledge. “If I screwed up, I’m really sorry, but I thought—”
“You were right.”
“Oh. Good,” he sighed.
“Have you talked to Paul yet?”
Joey whistled low. “I think he’s still trying to decide whether that warrants penance.”
“I’ll put in a good word for you, if it’ll help.”
“Thanks, but last time I checked, you don’t get a vote in this.” He put his hands in his jacket pockets again and took his place beside me, saying nothing as the fog rolled out.
After a time, I cleared my throat and turned back from the edge. “So, Joseph Percival Bolin? Did I hear you properly?”
“Yeah,” he mumbled. “Got a little carried away, there.”
“You realize you’re giving Toula fodder, yes?”
“Well, my goal at this point is to make it through the entire Round Table with her,” he replied, following me back toward Georgie. “And before you ask, no, it’s not a family name—my parents are deeply into the Faire circuit.”
“You poor bastard. Though I suppose there are worse options in the canon…” I paused, reviewing that morning once more, then glanced up at Joey. “‘Knight of the red cross’?”
If ther
e had been sufficient light, I’m sure his face would have been scarlet. “It’s the only surcoat I have left,” he said, rubbing his neck. “After I started seminary, I got rid of some of my gear…it kind of seemed appropriate to keep that one, but…look, I got carried away, all right? Heat of the moment and all.”
I chuckled and gripped his shoulder through his wet coat. “Tell me, Joey, by chance, have you read any Spenser?”
“Yeah, that one wasn’t lost on me, either.”
“Just making sure.” I opened a gate to the barn and waved Georgie through, and she happily lumbered off to slaughter her dinner. “So where did you get the gun?”
Joey waited until I’d closed the gate behind us. “Helen made it for me. Said if I was going to be looking after Aiden, she wanted me to do it properly. Is that, uh—”
“Keep it close.” I gave his shoulder a final squeeze, then set off alone toward the lights of my palace, trying and failing to think of anything but my Meggy.
Meg, now. And no longer mine.
CHAPTER 21
* * *
I passed the long night alone, sitting on the edge of my unused bed and mulling over all the ways Meggy might have a change of heart. She was worried over Moyna, I told myself; she was over-stressed and under-slept and perhaps not thinking clearly. Yes, I could have been more sensitive with her—given what her father had done to her, surely Meggy didn’t appreciate it when Toula overpowered her, and I should have woken her sooner. Maybe if I’d reprimanded Toula…or Joey…
But as dawn broke, I admitted to myself that letting Meggy kill Joey wouldn’t have made her love me. I’d stopped her, protected her, kept that death from her conscience—and still, she wanted out. She didn’t love me anymore. Maybe she never had.
No, something in me insisted, that couldn’t be true—I’d loved her, she’d loved me, and she was the one who had dreamed of us making a little family together. We’d been so happy that summer, Meggy and me, and I’d do anything to please her, she knew that…
…and she still didn’t love me.
My Meggy didn’t love me.
And so I sat there as the sunlight began its slow stretch across the rug, holding my head in my hands and wondering where I’d gone so horribly wrong. When I closed my eyes, I saw her standing there, twenty-one and still all limbs and soft curves, her blue eyes bright and smiling, her unruly curls tamed into a ponytail that bounced with each flick of her head, her shorts teasingly brief, her pink T-shirt thinned to translucence by laundering. The clothing faded away into a cheap black bikini, and as the light faded, I felt her soft lips on mine, tasted salt on her skin and beer in her mouth, heard the ocean’s ceaseless pounding behind us and a gull crying as it passed overhead. The sun had set, her clothes had been tossed away, and she arched her back and gasped as I moved in her, moved with her, letting the waves set the tempo. I saw her chipped red fingernails disappear into the towel as she clutched handfuls to steady herself—and then she was beside me, chilling in the breeze and curling against me for warmth, her hair spreading on the rumpled towel like a living thing, quivering to its own secret rhythm.
I held her there, deep in my mind, and then I looked upon the orange sunrise and let the memory go.
Meggy didn’t love me, and I had to face her once again.
I sent word to the others to meet me at the barn, as there was no convenient place in the palace to open a dragon-sized rip in the fabric of the world. By the time I’d dressed and pushed thoughts of the previous day to a dark corner of my mind, the sun was decently high, and Val was waiting in the corridor with half a dozen guards. “Change of plans?” I asked, surprised to find him accompanied.
The squad fell in against the far wall, giving me space to maneuver, and Val stepped aside to allow me passage. “A precaution,” he said quietly, taking up his usual position to my left. “Lord Oberon remains in the realm.”
I felt him glance at my thoughts just as I made the same examination of his, and he nodded, satisfied that we’d reached one conclusion. I didn’t trust Oberon—I’d have been a fool to trust him, in truth—but I couldn’t cast him out of Faerie. The realm was only too happy to have him back, as it continued to remind me whenever I crossed his path. But Oberon had made it clear that he wasn’t going to help us, meaning that while I took the plunge into the Gray Lands, he’d be waiting on the safe side of the gate, assumedly watching the fun with a beer in his hand. I wouldn’t have put it past him to enchant himself a box of popcorn.
And with me on the far side and only Helen holding the gate open, what was to stop him from subduing her and closing the gate? With the connection cut, we’d run out of magic in minutes, and then we’d be at the mercy of whatever we found in the other realm, unable to open an escape route. In other words, we’d probably be dead.
I had run that scenario once I’d forced myself to put my moping on hold. Assuming something in the Gray Lands dispatched me and Geheret killed Moyna, the court would then fall to Syral, Mother’s eldest surviving child—but given Doran’s little performance, Syral and the other three were probably guests of Geheret’s, and what would stop him from clearing them from the picture as well? With all of them dead, there would be only one of Mother’s children still alive to inherit: Aiden, trapped in Faerie at Oberon’s mercy, who assuredly would not live long. I didn’t know what would happen when Aiden fell—maybe the realm would choose one of Mother’s grandchildren, or maybe it would give up—but in any case, my court would be in chaos, and Oberon, if he moved quickly, could do as he pleased.
There was no telling what Oberon, reigning King of the Keys, really wanted—and in retrospect, I’m not sure if Oberon even knew at that time—but I wasn’t going to give him an opportunity to figure it out in my absence.
It seemed Val and I weren’t the only ones with reservations, as my entourage nearly stumbled over Vivi on the way downstairs. I didn’t know where she had acquired a skintight pair of jeans and a plaid flannel shirt in the last two days, but I strongly suspected Toula’s involvement. “Morning, Chief,” she said, hoisting herself off the middle of the staircase. “Got a second?”
I glanced back at my security, then at Vivi. “I’m on my way to a rendezvous—”
“Yeah, I know, everyone’s waiting, and Hal’s down there geeking out over the dragon. Walk and talk?” A shrug satisfied her, and she slipped into the pack to my right as we descended. “So, while the hospitality’s been lovely, and I do thank you for trying to cover for me with the boy, I think it’s time we bounced.”
I nodded, squinting into the morning light as we passed onto the back terrace. “Bounced where, pray tell? You’re not going back to Rigby until this is settled.”
“Says who?”
“Say I, and if that’s not good enough, says Slim and Toula and anyone else with half a brain. I’m not dropping you off until I’m satisfied that you’re not going to get eaten in your sleep, understood?”
Vivi huffed and kicked at a chip of rock, sending it skittering across the flagstones. “All right, then, if you’re going to be difficult, how about taking me to my parents’ place?”
I had to think for a second. “Alaska, right?”
“Yeah, they’re about an hour south of Denali—the park border, not the mountain,” she explained. “Not many neighbors. If it’ll make you feel better, I’ll stay off the Fringe network until you surface again.”
“You really want to go to Alaska in November?”
It was Vivi’s turn to shrug. “I’m expected for Thanksgiving.”
“Thanksgiving,” I said doubtfully.
She nodded. “Family’s been doing it for a while—it’s an excuse for Mom to get us all under one roof and tell us we’re not eating enough. If I’m in a week early, they’re not going to be upset. Hell, two of my brothers still hang around there. So how about doing me a favor and letting me clear out with Hal?”
We were approaching the rose garden, and I paused in the pathway to study her face. There was no need to
look at her thoughts—I spotted the fear beneath Vivi’s superficially placid countenance. Annoying as she could be, the girl was far from stupid.
“I assume you intend this exit as a precaution,” I murmured, bending close to her.
My breath had fogged her glasses, and she pulled them off to clean them before she replied. “Should things not go according to plan”—she popped them back into place and fiddled with the frame until they were roughly straight—“I’d rather not be stranded here, hoping someone allows me to leave. Yeah?”
The fact that she was willing to take her boyfriend—the man who until recently hadn’t even known about the Fringe—home to meet her parents told me everything I needed to know about her state of mind. “Yeah,” I said. “Do you suppose they’d mind having a few additional houseguests?”
Her eyes narrowed. “How many additional houseguests?”
“Besides you two? I was thinking of four.”
She considered this briefly, then nodded. “Shouldn’t be a problem unless Father P has some objection to sharing quarters with a bunch of faeries. He didn’t seem too keen on my paranormal investigators, you know.”
“Oh, don’t worry about Paul,” I said, pushing open the gate to the garden. “I broke him in years ago. Hard.”
It cheered me to find that Oberon had apparently opted not to see me off, but I worked quickly in case he changed his mind. Leaving the guards outside the barn and Georgie blocking the staircase, I sent Vivi and Hal up to Joey’s quarters in the loft and herded Eunice, Paul, and Slim up the stairs behind them. True to form, Stuart gave me a moment’s trouble—“I told you, a wizard doesn’t run,” he protested when I explained the change of plans—but Toula countered with a palm full of fire and a pointed look, and he scurried off after the rest of the pack. When he had gone, I looked about until I spotted Meggy, who had laid claim to a seat atop a stack of hay bales in the far corner of the barn and was speaking to no one. She kept her eyes on me as I approached but otherwise gave no acknowledgement of my presence, and I fought to push thoughts of the previous day back into the shadows for a more opportune time. “You don’t have to talk to me,” I told her, keeping my voice low so as not to echo around the barn, “just listen. I think we may have a safe house for the Rigby crowd until this blows over. Go with them.”
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