by Tanya Huff
He roused enough to twine his fingers in her damp hair and pull her face down to his. “Be careful, Lady,” he whispered, “for Darkness waits.”
“I’ll be careful,” she agreed against his mouth, took another kiss for the road, and left. He tastes different in the morning, she thought, more like apricots and less like apples.
Outside, the air was clear and still. The early morning light had a fragile feeling to it. Rebecca paused beneath the chestnut tree, looked up, and remembered.
“Oh, Alexander.” She sagged against the trunk and her eyes filled with tears. She’d just realized, really realized, she’d never see her friend again.
Five thirty, called the cathedral bells, still blocks away. Five thirty.
Rebecca straightened. “I know,” she sniffed. “I’m coming.”
At ten minutes to six, slightly out of breath, she ran down the stairs and into the cafeteria kitchen. Waving at the elderly woman already at work wrapping danishes, she crossed into the locker room, dressed, and went to find Lena.
As expected, the supervisor was in her office and Rebecca began the morning ritual.
“Good morning, Lena.”
“Morning, puss.” Lena looked up from her coffee and smiled.
“Would you fix my hair, please?”
“Don’t I always? C’mere.”
Rebecca perched on the indicated corner of the desk, handing Lena a brush and an elastic.
Balancing her cigarette on the edge of the chipped saucer she used for an ashtray, the older woman shook her head at the state of Rebecca’s curls. “You forgot to brush this morning.”
“Never mind. Did you have a good weekend?”
Rebecca’s memory traveled from Alexander to Evan. “Not exactly,” she admitted. “But it got better at the end.”
“Want to tell me about it? Tilt your head, puss.”
Rebecca tilted obediently. “Well,” she said at last, “the little man who lived in the tree outside the building where I live got killed, then Roland and me got attacked by a lawn, then Ivan the ghost went for help, then Evantarin came through from the Light and he stayed with me.”
“Evantarin stayed with you? Who is Evantarin?” Lena snapped the elastic around Rebecca’s newly tamed hair with unnecessary force. She worried about the girl spending her weekends with no supervision and wondered why Social Services didn’t have her safely in a Home somewhere.
“He said to call him Evan and he’s sort of an angel, I guess. He glows and he came to fight Darkness.” She reached up and touched her netted ponytail, hoping, as she always did, that her hair could breathe while it was bound so tightly. “Am I done?”
“You’re done,” Lena told her, relieved Rebecca’s visitor had turned out to be just another figment of an uncontrolled imagination. “And you’d better get started. Those muffins won’t bake themselves.”
“’Cause if they did I’d be out of a job,” Rebecca replied seriously. She liked it when she knew the proper thing to say. Gathering up her brush, she headed out into the kitchen.
“What are you grinning about?” asked the last woman of the shift to arrive, sticking her head in the office as Rebecca skipped away.
Lena took a long pull on her cigarette. “Rebecca has an angel visiting her.” The smoke trickled back out through her nose. “His name is Evantarin and he’s come to fight Darkness.”
“Yeah?” The other woman’s gaze dropped to the newspaper she held and the headline, Man Shoots Neighbor; Claims “The Yuppie Son-of-a-Bitch Deserved to Die.” “Well, I wish him luck, he’s gonna need it.”
“And what are you doing up so early in the morning?”
Roland turned from the bookcase and shrugged. “I couldn’t sleep, Uncle Tony, so I thought I’d look something up. Do you mind?”
“Mind? Hell, no.” He peered at the book in his nephew’s hands. “An encyclopedia eh? I don’t suppose you’re looking up something pertaining to gainful employment?”
“Not exactly.” Roland closed the book and slid it back on the shelf. “I got called a bard this weekend, I just wanted to see what it meant. This wasn’t very helpful.”
“What do you expect?” Tony asked, doing up the last few buttons on his work shirt. “We got that set at the grocery store, $1.99 with every five dollar purchase. Siddown and have a cup of coffee with me and I’ll tell you all I know about bards before I leave for the shop.”
Roland followed his uncle into the kitchen and watched him fill two mugs from the automatic coffee machine on the counter. “How do you know about bards?” he asked, fishing the cream out of the fridge.
“Books,” Tony told him, handing him a mug and waving him into a seat. “I read the right kind of books. That’s the problem with you kids today, you don’t read the right books. You need more history and less of this Hollywood adultery crap. Now, for starters, a bard was more than just a musician.” He studied the cream swirling into his coffee and added two heaping spoonfuls of sugar. “Where was I? Oh, yeah … A bard used music the way a wizard would use magical spells, using his music to influence reality …”
Spellbound, Roland listened, the events of the weekend having banished disbelief.
“… course not every musician was a bard. It took a special talent and years of study. Seven years studying, seven years practicing, and seven years playing is how I think it went.” Tony snorted. “Twenty-one years. And I thought a five-year electrical apprenticeship went on forever. So anyway,” he stood and put his empty mug in the sink, “you’re what … twenty-eight? You started with this nonsense at about fourteen; hell, you’ve barely done your second seven years.”
Don’t get cocky … Mrs. Ruth’s words came back to him and finally made sense.
“And even if I believed all that stuff—which I’m not saying I do or I don’t—if you’re a bard, things have gone downhill since the old days. Johnny Cash, now that was a bard. You, you’d be better off if you got a job.”
Roland started, his thoughts had wandered miles away. “Uh, I think I’ve got one.”
“Good.” Tony paused at the door. “Try to see this one through to the end for a change.”
As the door closed, Roland studied the guitar calluses on his fingertips and wondered whose voice kept muttering sepulchrally in his head that the end was near.
“It’s not like Michelle to be late.”
“Everyone’s late sooner or later,” her companion pointed out philosophically.
“Yeah, but Michelle’s gone gaga over one of the guests, taking a little extra time to clean his room if you know what I mean. You’d think she’d be here early with bells on.”
“Come off it. Sweet, little, innocent Michelle?”
“Well, sweet, little, innocent Michelle could hop into every bed she makes for all I care.” The key jammed in the lock and it took vigorous jiggling to free it. “Just as long as she’s on time for work. I don’t want to get stuck doing her half of the shift as well as my own. That’s weird, it’s unlocked already.” The door swung open and she groped around the corner for the light. “Smells like a toilet in here. And there’s something all over the floor.”
“Oh, no! Look at this mess.”
Brushes, cleansers, shampoo, and soap fanned out from an overturned cleaning cart.
And then they looked up.
Dangling above the cart, her tongue black and protruding, was Michelle, a curtain sash tight around her neck and great scratches down her throat where she’d tried to tear it away.
Hands behind his head, the Dark Adept listened to the distant sounds of screaming.
“I might as well stay in bed,” he mused. “Breakfast is likely to be delayed.”
“Master?”
His gaze flickered off the ceiling and down to the shadow squatting like a stain against the blue sheets. “Get off the bed,” he commanded coldly. “If I have to tell you again …”
“Not again, Master.” The shadow moved from the bed to the small table beside it. “Master, the Adep
He frowned, remembering the pain the Light had caused him. He had expected to win and the pain had been greater for that. “What did you see?” he asked, his voice cold. “What did you hear?”
The shadow quivered at its master’s tone, but it knew better than to hesitate. “There are three, Master. A man and two women. They help and they know they help the Light. They hunt you, Master.”
“Fools.” He stretched and then worked the fingers of his left hand into the muscles of his right shoulder. A white pucker marked the perfect flesh and the wound, although it had healed in the hours since their confrontation, still throbbed. Four nights and five days until he could open the gate and this world had suddenly ceased to be amusing. Not for the first time, he wished his original passage through the barrier had been made closer to Midsummer Night, but the barrier had to be passed when the opportunity arose and Midsummer Night could not be moved. His entire body convulsed with the memory of the crossing.
“How did you get so strong, my shining brother?” he wondered aloud when his breathing had steadied and the sweat that beaded his skin had dried. “After all you’d been through, you should have fallen into my hands.” The Light, like the Darkness, could draw strength from many things, and the Light had found friends. “Give me their essences!” he demanded suddenly.
“Yes, Master.” The shadow flattened to paper thinness against the polished oak. “But I hold only two, the man and one woman. The other was … was … was too …”
“You failed.” The Dark Adept waved away the shadow’s excuses.
“But, Master, she was …” The shadow’s protest became a howl and it snapped through several shapes until it lay pulsating weakly and wearing no shape at all.
“I said, you failed.”
“Yes, Master.” It barely had a voice remaining.
“Give me the two you took.” He showed his teeth as the shadow slid over to his outstretched hand. “And we will see, my pretty adversary, what we can do about removing you from your strength without leading you straight to me.”
* * *
Daru threaded her way through the rabbit warren of overflowing cubicles that made up the Department of Social Services, a computer printout in one hand and a bagel balanced precariously on a cup of coffee in the other. She sidestepped a sullen teenager without looking up, muttered a greeting of sorts to a colleague, and scowled at the list of names and numbers she held. Things couldn’t possibly have gotten this bad over the weekend. Could they?
She turned into her own tiny square of office space, scooped a stack of file folders off her chair, and searched, without much hope of success, for a place to put them. Sighing, she piled them with others on the floor, grabbed at the falling bagel she’d forgotten she still held, and splashed coffee across an overdue report.
“Ms. Sastri?”
“What?”
The young woman backed up a step at the expression on Daru’s face. “Uh, Mr. Graham just went home sick with that flu bug—he threw up in the elevator, said he felt fine until the fifth floor then, blammo—and Ms. Freedman and Mr. Wu both called and won’t be in.” She offered the armload of files she carried. “The director says you’re to deal with these.” Backing up another step would take her out of the cubicle, so she settled for leaning away and smiling nervously. “Don’t shoot me, Ms. Sastri, I’m only the piano player.”
Muttering under her breath, Daru took the papers and set them with exaggerated care on the desk. “Is that all?” she growled.
“Uh, no. I’m supposed to remind you, you’re due in court in twenty minutes. But you probably knew that …” she added, exiting a lot more quickly than she’d entered.
Daru sank into her chair and buried her face in her hands. In less than thirty seconds, her case load had tripled.
“I’ll just finish up what has to be done and take the rest of the week off.” She mocked herself and her blithe promise of the night before. She should’ve known it wasn’t going to be that easy.
“Uh, Ms. Sastri, police on line one. Apparently they picked up a derelict with your name and this number on a card in his pocket.”
It was never that easy.
“I thought you said you’d be early?”
“Yeah, well I got delayed.” Roland pushed past the Adept and into Rebecca’s apartment, Tom following close on his heels. He leaned Patience gently against the wall, the motion obviously carefully controlled as he practically quivered with suppressed energy. “First, the subway took forever to arrive.” Unable to remain still, he began to pace, arms waving for emphasis. “Six—not one, not two, but six—trains went by going the other way. The platform got packed. Some turkey dropped a lit cigarette on my case. I barely avoided going up in smoke, and then I got yelled at for flicking the damned thing to the floor. Okay.” He spread his hands and took a deep breath. “I can deal with that. So the train finally comes and we’re crammed in like sardines, then, between stations, in the middle of nowhere, we stop and the lights go out. A kid starts to scream and the fat, smelly lady behind me grabs onto my ass. I try to get out of her reach, step on a foot not my own, and a riot nearly breaks out. Are you smiling?”
Evan brushed his hair back off his face and schooled his expression. “I wouldn’t do that.” It hadn’t exactly been a smile.
Roland scowled, stomped along another two lengths of the room, and aimed a kick at the cat. He missed by a considerable margin, but Tom hissed and dove under the couch. Irrationally, Roland felt better.
“The cat had no part in your troubles,” Evan pointed out gently.
“You don’t know that,” Roland snarled. “He was waiting for me at the corner.”
“I sent him to watch for you.”
“Oh.”
“I think you owe him an apology.”
“Forget it.” Roland stopped pacing and glared. “I am not apologizing to a cat.”
Evan merely looked at him.
After a moment, Roland’s gaze fell.
“Oh, all right,” he muttered and turned his head vaguely in Tom’s direction. “I’m sorry I kicked at you.”
Safe under the couch, Tom growled.
Only Evan’s presence kept Roland from growling back. He straightened out the fingers that had turned to fists and made a conscious effort to calm down. So he’d had an irritating morning. That didn’t give him the right to make everyone else’s day miserable. He could feel the weight of Evan’s regard and he let it sink down over him, smoothing out jagged edges and filling in gouged nerves.
“I guess I’ll laugh about this later,” he sighed.
Evan grinned.
“I said later.” The grin remained and Roland found himself returning it. He couldn’t help it; a morning’s worth of petty annoyances just couldn’t stand before the strength of Evantarin, Adept of the Light, which, when he came to think about it, was a damned good thing considering what they’d be facing later on.
Evan’s gaze grew speculative as the silence stretched between them and Roland felt himself begin to flush, suddenly very aware that Evan wore only his jeans. The skin of the Adept’s chest and stomach stretched smooth and golden over lean lines of muscle, and Roland’s hand slowly rose toward it.
Oh, no! Not that, too. Not this morning. Calling up the last of his earlier irritation, Roland forced his hand back down, wet his lips, and asked curtly, “Have you had breakfast?”
In the moment Evan took before answering, Roland realized that should the Adept force the issue he’d be unable to resist and his entire sexual orientation would crumble. He wasn’t sure how he felt when Evan merely turned to the table and pointed proudly at the toaster.
“I made toast.”
He sounded so much like Rebecca that Roland allowed himself to relax. “Well, put some clothes on and we’ll grab coffee before we start.”
“Sounds good.” Evan nodded and went into the bed alcove.
Roland followed Evan’s progress by the soft music of his silver bracelets. He wondered if he took them off to sleep. Which led him to wonder if he took them off to … Stop that! he railed at himself. You are developing the worst case of gutter mind.
Evan dressed was a lot easier to deal with and the two of them gathered up the sketches and left the apartment, with Tom slipping out just as they were about to close the door.
“So where do we start?” Roland asked as the three of them moved down the hall.
“At the top,” Evan told him. “The Darkness is every bit as predictable as it accuses the Light of being. And besides, would you stay in anything less than the best if you didn’t have to?”
“You aren’t,” Roland pointed out, nearly tripping over Tom who darted suddenly ahead and down the stairs.
“Haven’t you heard that friendship buys a better bed than money?”
Roland snorted. “That sounds like it came out of a fortune cookie.”
“Ever wonder where fortune cookie fortunes come from?”
“Give me a break.”
“No, really, they’re our second biggest export.”
“I know I’m going to regret this …” They stepped into the sunshine and Roland squinted up at his companion. “What’s your first?”
“Light beer.”
Roland rolled his eyes.
“Get it, Light beer. Light …” Evan sighed. “I’ll work on it.”
“You’re sure you haven’t see him?”
The woman on the desk at the King George Hotel shook her head. “No, I …”
“Think carefully, Sheila,” Evan broke in, his voice pitched to elicit confidences. “This is more important than you can know.”
Roland spent an instant wondering how Evan had known the woman’s name, then he saw the brass name tag pinned to her uniform blazer. Score one for the real world, he thought.
She studied the sketch again, chewing the pale gloss from her bottom lip. “No, I’m sure I’d remember if I’d seen him.”
“Damn,” Roland cursed under his breath. “Strike seven.” They hadn’t quite started at the top—the King George most definitely—for there were a number of lesser hotels between it and Rebecca’s apartment. It had occurred to Roland when they were starting out that they might have a little trouble getting hotel employees to cooperate, given that they had no official reason for their request, but Evan’s presence seemed to inspire everyone from the manager to the cleaning staff to help. And in every hotel so far someone—male, female, young, old; it didn’t seem to matter—had slipped the Adept a private phone number and the whispered confidence that perhaps later they might remember more.
-->