“And where has it gotten you? Older.” Riley sipped slowly from his drink, then looked deep into the pale green liquid for a moment. “I was hoping you’d come for me.” He sighed. “It’s not every day that a pooka gets put in charge of something this big. Even so, do you think that anyone is really going to thank me for this? They’ll all be too busy recovering from hangovers. I want someone there who’s clearheaded enough to be able to say ‘Good job, Riley.’” He looked at her again. “Please, Tango?”
“Don’t make puppy eyes at me,” she replied gruffly. “It’s not going to work. I don’t like Highsummer Night. You get drunk, you play a few pranks, then you find a human or another Kithain and screw like rabbits. And the next day everybody lies and says what a great time they had.”
“There’s more to Highsummer than that and you know it. Except for the pranks, you could be describing Pan’s. You seem to like it well enough.”
“I work here. I don’t get drunk myself, and the last thing I did like a rabbit was have salad for dinner.” Tango reached over the top of the bar and poured the rest of her club soda into a sink. “I’m sorry, Riley. Even if I wanted to, I can’t. I have responsibilities here to think about. I have to work.”
Riley’s face went hard. “You are turning into a grump,” he commented sourly. This time, Tango knew, he wasn’t joking. She felt a little flush creep into her face. “You wouldn’t have used work as an excuse six years ago.”
“Riley...”
“Don’t bother.” He drained his drink and set the empty glass down on the bar. He pulled a pen and a piece of paper out of his packet. Writing something on the paper, he thrust it at her. “I’m flying Air Canada. This is my flight number and the hotel where I’m staying. I’m flying out of San Francisco International tomorrow night at 9:30.” He looked into her eyes. “At least think about it, okay?” He took her hand and wrapped her fingers around the paper. “Give me a call. I’d really like to have you there.”
Tango pulled her hand back. Riley looked disappointed, then sighed and walked away from her, disappearing into the crowd. For a moment, Tango considered calling him back. For a moment, she considered tearing up the paper and forgetting all about Toronto and his invitation. Instead, she slid Riley’s paper into her pocket. She put her headset back in place and turned it on. “I’m on duty again, Alan. Anything to report?”
* * *
She looked at Riley’s paper again a few hours later as she sat in her office. On the other side of the wall behind her, Pan’s was closing up for the night. The staff was chasing the last few clubgoers out through the doors, cleaning up the dance floor and wiping down the bars. Another successful night at San Francisco’s hottest club. Tango considered Riley’s paper and wondered if Pan’s couldn’t manage without her for a week.
Highsummer Night was just a little more than a week away. And surely a weekend night flight to Toronto would still have seats available, even the day before. Taking time off work, in spite of what she had told Riley, wouldn’t be a problem. Alan was good. She could leave the club in his hands. She drummed her fingers on the desk. Getting to Toronto wouldn’t be a problem.
Going would.
Tango leaned back in her chair and stared up at the ceiling. She hadn’t lied when she’d told Riley that she didn’t like Highsummer Night. It was pointless, stupid, and childish. Like most Kithain celebrations, and like most Kithain themselves.
With the rare exception of Riley and a few other friends scattered around the world, Tango really did not enjoy the company of Kithain. They were too absorbed in the games that they played, too caught up in the pursuit of dreams and elusive wonder. Kithain were trapped between two worlds: the real world, where they lived, died, and ate greasy hamburgers, and a dream world, where they could still live as their immortal faerie ancestors had, amid pomp, adventures and raucous feasts. Kithain who lived with their minds floating in that dream world might stay young longer, but in Tango’s opinion they also tended to be the next best thing to useless in the real world.
Maybe she was turning into a grump, one of the bitter, stubborn and dull older Kithain. If she was, then the change had been building for the last fifteen years. There was a small mirror in her drawer. Tango felt almost guilty as she took it out and looked into it. No wrinkles yet. No sagging. No gray hairs. She looked like any thirty-year-old woman. She didn’t look like a grump. She didn’t feel like a grump — at least not most of the time. A Kithain really was only as young or old as she looked and felt. And Tango felt about thirty most of the time, still energetic, but with experiences that were starting to become a heavy load. Some days that load felt heavier than others.
Like today. Tango had played the Kithain games of wild youth once, hopping from freehold to freehold, from the real world to dreams and back again. She had been fifteen, in both appearance and reality, when she had gone through the Chrysalis, the period of awakening to her faerie legacy and the existence of Kithain. She’d looked only twenty when games had become sour for her, thirty years later. Tired and disillusioned, she had walked away from a freehold in...
she wasn’t even sure where it had been now. Somewhere in Colorado, a freehold so lost in the Dreaming that it barely had a location in the real world. She had walked away, knowing that there must be more to the world than Kithain games. Two days later, she had been in Bangkok.
Traveling had done her good. She probably knew more about the other creatures and beings that shared the shadows of the world than most Kithain did. And she knew that she found most of them, and most humans, more interesting than most Kithain. She had met the owner of Pan’s, a human playboy and mage named Aaron Barry, in Australia five years ago. They had become good friends, strong friends, almost instantly. But humans, mages or otherwise, weren’t Kithain.
Tango worked a kenning, a tiny, simple enchantment that brought the fae seeming of people and things into focus for her. In the mirror, her reflection shifted. Her hair became wild and pale, her eyes dark and beady, her teeth crooked and her features rough, an exaggerated red sausage of a nose against apple cheeks. Her hands, holding the mirror, became tough and callused. Her arms and legs grew gnarled, and she became even shorter than she normally was. She grimaced at herself, almost sure that the mirror would break. This was her true face, the face of her kith or faerie race. Riley was a tricky pooka. Tango was a dour nocker.
But not even nockers were grim and grouchy all of the time. They were the descendants of earth faeries, the miners and smiths of the Kithain. In the modern age, their magic had also come to include machines, so much so that most nockers were more skilled with machines than they were with other Kithain, Still, they had their social moments. Kithain blood called to Kithain blood. And in spite of the way she felt about Kithain, Tango was more social than most nockers — maybe because her magic was weak and any knack for machinery almost nonexistent. She liked being around people. Her own crooked nocker face was, aside from Riley’s, the only Kithain face she had seen in a long time. Seeing a few more for just a short while wouldn’t hurt her, would it? It would be nice to spend more time with Riley.
Thirty years of Kithain life had left her with a lot of dark memories. Riley’s offer was waking some of the brighter ones.
A stirring in one corner of the office drew her attention away from the mirror. The shadows in that corner were momentarily alight with a glow that only her kenning allowed her to see. Tango smiled. That was another reason to accept Riley’s invitation. The glow was Glamour, the energy of magic and wonder — and lifeblood to the Kithain. Tango rose and walked over to the struggling shimmer. She dipped her hand into it, letting it tingle like saltwater across her skin. Stories said that Glamour had been everywhere once. Now it was rare, and clung to the real world in only a few places, like Riley’s apartment building, filled with the creative energies of artists and musicians, or Pan’s, enchanted by Aaron with his human magick but attracting a thin kind of Glamour as a side effect. The Glamour around Kithain freeholds
and courts was usually thick, however. Part of Tango craved that density of Glamour, cried out to be submersed in it. Just as part of her craved the company of other Kithain for
just a little while.
And she did have a few very fond memories of Highsummer Night.
Tango walked back to her desk and considered Riley’s paper again. Maybe the pooka was right. Maybe it was time for her to go back to Kithain life, at least for a little while. It probably would do her good. She might even find that the years had taken away the disgust she felt for Kithain society and that she could stomach the company of other Kithain again.
If she didn’t, at least Toronto had plenty of humans to hang around with.
She reached for the phone and dialed Riley’s hotel. It was a good hotel; even at this early, early hour, there was a night clerk on duty. The giddy anticipation of Highsummer was already creeping up on her, and she briefly considered having the clerk ring Riley’s room. She would enjoy waking him up. Instead, though, she just left a brief, anonymous message. Let’s tango in Toronto. “He’ll know what it means,” she told the clerk.
* * *
Getting a ticket for the 9:30 flight to Toronto the next night was as easy as Tango had anticipated it would be. Riley had written down his seat number, and with a little smooth talking Tango even managed to get the seat beside his. There was no return call from Riley, but that was nothing unusual. Riley had never returned a call on time since she had known him. So Tango packed her bags, promised to call Alan with Riley’s number in Toronto as soon as she had it, and drove herself to the airport. She would rent a car in Toronto. There were very few lines at the airport. Not even the departure lounge was particularly crowded.
Which made it abundantly clear that there was no sign of Riley.
That wasn’t especially unusual either. Riley was about as punctual as he was prompt in returning phone calls. To judge by the desire that he had expressed last night in Pan’s to have her come to Toronto, though, she would have expected to see him waiting for her anxiously. But maybe not. Tango bought a cheap, trashy novel at a terminal convenience store and settled down to wait.
When preboarding was announced and Riley still had not appeared, she began to worry. Going to the desk, she caught the attention of one of the attendants. “I’m supposed to be traveling with someone. Can you tell me if he’s checked in?” •
“Certainly. His name?”
“Riley Stanton.”
The attendant entered the name in his computer terminal, then shook his head. “I’m sorry.”
“He hasn’t checked in yet?”
“There isn’t anyone by that name on this flight.” Tango bit her tongue. Riley could be traveling under a false name. The long-lived Kithain did that fairly frequently. She hesitated to ask any further questions in case he was. It could make things awkward for both of them, especially if Riley was carrying the kind of “party favors” that the mages of the Cult of Ecstasy usually made. “Thank you,” she said politely. One of the other attendants called boarding for her row. Tango took out her boarding pass and got in line.
“Gate H,” said the attendant mechanically.
Tango followed the other passengers almost numbly. There was late, and then there was Riley. And then there was really late. She could imagine him rushing through the airport as though he were a character in some travel comedy, the kind where tickets get left behind and overpacked luggage dumps clothing in the middle of the terminal. She hoped he made the flight. She had been looking forward to having a good talk with him during the trip. Once they got to Toronto, she was sure that she would lose him to his duties as organizer of the Highsummer party.
She found her seat, on the aisle, and stashed her carry-on in the overhead compartment. Just as she was settling into her seat, a tall woman with platinum-blond hair and an expensive jacket stopped in the aisle. “All right, Cheryl,” she said to a small girl with her, “you have the window seat. If you need something, Mommy will be right behind you.”
Tango glanced up. “I think there must be some mistake. I’m waiting for a friend.” She touched the seat beside her. “This is his seat.”
The woman glanced at the row numbers overhead, then at her daughter’s boarding pass. “6A? No. It’s ours.” She flashed Tango a dazzling, perfect smile that spoke of long hours of adult orthodontics. “Excuse us.”
“Yay!” squealed Cheryl, clambering around Tango. “Wait!” Tango stood up. “Let’s check with an attendant. There’s been...”
“There’s no mistake.” The woman’s mouth compressed into a hard line of displeasure. “I requested a seat reassignment when we checked in. This is the seat they gave my daughter.”
Tango took a deep breath and resisted the urge to give the woman reason to spend even more money on corrective dentistry. “If you don’t mind,” she said smoothly, “I’d just like to check that myself.” She flagged down an attendant and explained the situation.
The attendant disappeared toward the front of the plane, then reappeared a minute later. “I’m sorry,” she reported with a smile, “but the seat assignment is correct.”
The platinum-blond woman gave Tango a smug smile and settled into her own seat. Tango choked back a snarl. What kind of parent brought a kid on a night flight anyway? “What happened to the person who had the seat before? Has he been bumped?”
“No. The seat was never sold. If you will take your seat, we’re ready to start taxiing to the runway.”
Tango blinked and sat down in surprise. And an unpleasant thought occurred to her. A thought that made her hands itch to be around Riley’s scrawny throat and squeezing.
Pookas took immense delight in playing pranks — one reason they loved Highsummer Night so much. Riley hadn’t played a serious prank on her in years. She had thought their friendship was past that.
“Hi!” Cheryl said brightly. “This is my first time flying at night.” She shoved her skinny little arm under Tango’s nose. There was a gaudy gold charm bracelet around her wrist. Cheryl indicated a charm shaped like a star. “Mommy bought me a new charm. See?”
One of the plastic covers on the armrests cracked under Tango’s grip. Cheryl glanced at the broken plastic, then up at Tango’s face. Tango didn’t look back at her. She was concentrating on breathing slowly and steadily, smoothing out her black anger at Riley.
CHAPTER TWO
Who knows upon what soil they fed Their hungry thirsty roots’
Matt walked down the steps of the fraternity house as if he belonged there, as if he were just another frat boy going out for the night. Miranda looked up at him. “Finished so soon?” she asked sarcastically.
“I hate summer,” Matt complained. “Practically everyone’s gone away. There can’t be more than a handful of frat boys left in the city.” He jerked a thumb at the dark bulk of the frat house behind him. “This is the third time this week I’ve had to come here.”
Miranda shrugged. “Kidnap him. Keep him on ice.” “Yeah, sure. And what happens when he’s gone? Do I just get another one?” Matt wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his varsity jacket, leaving a dark streak glistening on the blue leather. Miranda wasn’t sure if he’d ever really played rugby, but Matt liked to cultivate a style he called “collegiate gone savage.” The jacket was worn and stained, the jeans he wore with it tom. Matt seldom took the jacket off, even on the hottest of summer nights. “These boys have parents, Miri, who miss their babies when they’re gone. And they have friends. Too many frat boys go missing or die suddenly, and it gets very hard for me.” He grimaced. “You’re ■■
lucky. You can feed wherever you want to.”
“Cry me a river,” she replied. Matt glared at her angrily. Miranda returned his glare, meeting his gaze coolly and directly. For a moment, their wills clashed: Matt seeking dominance, Miranda denying him with the arrogance of experienced, rightful power. Finally, with a snarl and a flash of bared teeth, Matt looked away.
“Where are Tolly and Blue?” he asked
in a hiss.
“Following someone.” Miranda led him to her car, a black sports model parked down the block, without saying anything else.
“Who?”
Miranda remained silent and inscrutable as she started the car and pulled away from the curb. She was more than aware of Matt in the seat beside her, fuming and waiting for her reply. She left him hanging for a few minutes longer. The car slid through the hot Toronto night, whispering from one pool of light below a streetlamp to the next. Like a shadow. Miranda was a shadow, too, tall and lean. Matt might affect a look that recalled the university student he had once been, but Miranda chose to embrace what she was now. She wore black. Black jeans, black, high-collared shirt. Her long, black hair was pulled back and tied at the nape of her neck with a knot of black velvet. A gothic cross cast in dull pewter hung around her neck, her only ornamentation. Her eyes were intense, dark, drowning pools in a strong face that still retained its cafe-au-lait skin tone even after years of death.
She was a vampire. Why pretend otherwise?
She had known Matt back in university — they had both been taken the same night, reborn into the world of the Kindred in the same cemetery. Sometimes she wondered if he remembered her from then, when he was important and popular and she was nothing. Maybe that was why he always seemed so jealous of her now. Maybe it was because he would never be able to match her acceptance of the cruelty that their new existence demanded.
Miranda parked the car on Beverley Street, just south of Dundas. Matt glanced at her. “We’re going down to Queen? Just the two of us?”
“Does that frighten you?”
Matt snorted and swung his door open. A small group of people was just walking past, heading south, laughing and discussing some art movie they had seen. Matt’s door opened right in front of them, forcing the young man who was in the lead to come to a sudden halt or run into the vampire. The laughter stopped instantly. For a moment the young man stared at Matt, his expression neither angry nor frightened, but simply blank. Then he said, politely and automatically, “Excuse me,” and stepped around the open door.
Pomegranates full and fine Page 3