That would be tricky enough, but Miranda had another concern. “What do we do if this Duke Michael comes back before you finish?”
“Bluff. Stall. Whatever you can do. Just be careful if anyone points anything at you.” She nudged Marshall’s fallen pool cue with a toe. “This really was a spear in Marshall’s hands. A Kithain chimeric weapon created out of Glamour.”
“A spear can’t hurt me,” Miranda reminded her. “Maybe not, but an ordinary pool cue through the heart would, and you wouldn’t know the difference until too late.” The words were delivered coolly, like a warning in battle rather than advice to a friend.
Tango leaned over Riley and set the sprig of heather on his chest. She pressed her hands to his head, then slowly began to knead his scalp as if she were giving him a massage. Her fingers moved down to his jaw. Her eyes closed in concentration. Miranda turned away.
The entire pool hall... the entire changeling court, rather, had the same feel to it that Miranda had first noticed around Tango when the other woman had walked into Hopeful. Energetic. Dynamic. Electrical. As if the room were vibrating at a frequency so high that it only appeared to be motionless. Miranda had sensed something similar around Sin when they had seen him at Club Haze. The invisible, tingling energy in the court was much stronger than it had been around either changeling, however. Like riverwater to seawater. It was Glamour, she supposed, forever hidden from her. Miranda felt sure that there was more to the court than she could see. Only the shallowest of perceptions came to her now. The metallic clatter of the dropped pool cue, for example. The way her footsteps echoed, as though the pool hall were far larger than it looked. A sense of dark grandeur. Tango’s world was invisible to her, and almost incomprehensible.
Miranda had been watching Tolly whirl around the room for several minutes before she realized that he was waltzing between the pool tables, moving in perfect time, .as if to unheard music. Could the mad vampire see and hear things of the Glamour? Could he enter Tango’s world? It hardly seemed fair. “Tolly,” she asked softly, “what are you dancing to?”
Tolly snorted. “Nothing, silly.” He swept her up as he moved past, bringing her into his slow, rocking dance. “The orchestra’s gone home for the night.”
* * *
Glamour flooded through Tango like sunlight flooding through a prism. In the rich environment of the court, she had no trouble drawing it to her. The Glamour illuminated her entire being. The problem came when she tried to redirect it into Riley. It fractured — just as sunlight passing through a prism broke into a rainbow. She couldn’t focus the Glamour outside of her body, even though the atmosphere of the court should have made it easier. She could have used her cantrip on herself easily, but nothing she did seemed to carry the magic to Riley. She growled softly in frustration and moved her hands down to the pooka’s arms. “Work,” she muttered. “Work, damn you.”
The Glamour just dripped away from him. Again. She tried brushing the heather across his face as she drew on the Glamour, pouring the radiant energy through the sprig. Nothing.
Tango felt like pounding her hands on the table in frustration. Why had she even hoped that this might succeed? It had never worked in the past. In the forty -five years since she had gone through the Chrysalis, she had never found a way to use her magic on anyone but herself. Why should it work now? But it should have been possible! She should have been able to do it. She had to find a way to make the cantrip work this time!
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Miranda push Tolly away. The other woman sent the mad vampire to squat in a far comer, then came over to her. “Is it not...?”
“No,” Tango said harshly. “It’s not.”
“Oh.” Miranda turned away again. She stopped and glanced back. “Is there anything I can do?”
Tango clenched her teeth. “No. It’s not a problem you’d understand.”
The vampire just looked at her. “Try me,” she said, as if it were a challenge. “What’s your problem?” “Forget it! There’s nothing you can do.”
“Do you want to wake Riley up or not?”
Tango didn’t reply right away. She looked down at Riley. They had to wake him, or they would never find out all of what was going on. She and Miranda could only guess at part of the larger picture. Tolly knew something, but couldn’t tell them. Everything else that they needed to know was locked up in Riley’s sleeping mind. “All right,” she snapped grudgingly at Miranda. “My magic won’t work on him. I’ve tried, and I can’t do it!”
“Why won’t it work?” asked Miranda calmly.
“Because I can’t affect other Kithain. I don’t know' why. It just doesn’t work.” She glared up at the vampire. “And before you ask, I’ve tried every trick I’ve ever heard of to get it to work. The connection just isn’t there. I thought I could do it this time, with so much riding on being successful, but I can’t.”
Miranda was silent as she thought. “But you can affect your own body?”
“Easily.”
“What if...” Miranda drummed her fingers on the pool table. “What if you thought Riley’s body was yours?”
Tango stared at the vampire. “What? How?”
“I could hypnotize you. You’ve seen stage-mesmerists make people act like they’re somebody else? If you thought you were Riley — sort of like an out-of-body experience — maybe you could make the Glamour flow. A really deep trance might be enough to make the connection. It would be tricky. I’ve never actually done anything quite like it before.”
Tango considered the idea skeptically. “What would it involve?”
“A deep trance, a lot of suggestion.” Miranda shifted a bit. “And you would have to trust me enough to let me do it.”
Tango barely bit back a snarl. “Forget it.”
There was a fist-sized knot of guilt in her stomach when she said it.
“Why not?” demanded Miranda. “It’s our best chance.”
“You might mess with my head while you’re doing it.”
Why should she? Why would she want to do that to you now? Are you afraid she’s going to turn you over to Solomon?
Miranda’s face was a frozen mask. The vampire’s dark eyes looked down at her. Her lips were pressed tightly together. A human might have been breathing hard, nostrils flaring, but Miranda’s face didn’t move at all. Then, suddenly, she lashed out so fast that her hand seemed to blur, and slapped Tango across the face. “Damn it!” she screamed. “I don’t want to mess with your head! Do you think I enjoyed hiding the penny murders from you? Do you think I was playing games when 1 let Jubilee get away? I hated it!"
“Then why did you do it?” Tango screamed back at her.
“Because I didn’t want you to find out about me! I liked you and I didn’t want you to start hating me. You were the first person in a long time that I didn’t have to play power games with. And you treated me like a person instead of a creature. 1 liked fthatr-
Doesn’t that make sense? asked the guilt in the pit of Tango’s stomach. It rippled larger, and brought a flush of shame to Tango’s face.
Miranda wasn’t finished. “Remember what you said to me that first night at Hopeful? It’s nice to have someone you can talk to and know they’ll understand? Do you think you’re the only one who feels that way?”
Tango swallowed. “I...”
“Do you know why Solomon named me a traitor to the Bandog? Because I was trying to protect you. Because I was with you instead of committing another murder. Because I rejected him.” The other woman stood straight, her arms stiff at her sides, her hands clenched. “I’m tired of power games. I’m sick of killing. I want to do what you did, Tango. I want to walk away from it all. Why can’t you forgive me?”
Tango stared at her. In her anger, Miranda’s fangs had emerged. She looked so inhuman. Say it, whispered the voice inside her. Admit it.
“Because,” Tango whispered, “you remind me too much of myself. You make me remember what I used to be like. You make me remembe
r how easy it was.” She reached up and pressed Miranda’s lips closed, hiding the fangs. “Please don’t.” She looked straight into the vampire’s eyes. “Hypnotize me. Let’s do it.”
“Tango...”
“Do it!” She felt better, but still incomplete. “Hurry.”
Miranda looked like she was about to say something more, but stopped. Gently, she lifted Tango up to sit on the edge of the pool table. Then she caught her gaze again. Abruptly, Tango found herself falling into Miranda’s eyes. It was like diving into a warm swimming pool at night. The sensation was comforting, embracing. She didn’t fight it. Instead, she dove deeper into the shadows. Miranda was speaking to her, the vampire’s voice a distant, eerie murmur of command, encouraging her to remember everything that she knew about Riley, all of the experiences that they had shared. Obedienty, Tango remembered. The recent evening in Pan’s. Winnipeg six years ago. Boston before that. A wild road trip in the early eighties. The first time they met, 1978 in Montreal. Things she’d thought she had forgotten: postcards, Christmas gifts, telephone calls.
“Now,” instructed Miranda’s ghostly whale-song of a voice, “imagine all of that from Riley’s point of view.”
The imagining came easily. Riley’s end of the telephone calls. Riley writing postcards. Riley laughing uproariously as he steered the car off the road and they went jolting across rough desert in the wilds of New Mexico, with her grabbing at his arm and yelling at him.
“Become Riley,” Miranda said. “You are Riley. You are...”
* * *
Riley was barely aware of how strange it seemed to have a vampire tell him to open his eyes and look down at his own body. When she told him to reach out and purify his own blood, he did it — even though he had never been able to do any such thing before. His magic changed the shape of things. It wasn’t healing magic. But Glamour moved through his body and then into his other body, a sweet ripple of light. His other body stirred. The vampire watched the other body carefully, telling him to keep it up. He broke in two the sprig of heather he held and shifted his hands, putting one on his other body’s chest and one over its forehead. Heart and brain. His other body stretched.
“Just a little longer,” hissed the vampire. Riley concentrated, the ripple of Glamour becoming a rush.
His other body opened its eyes. “Tango?” he asked himself.
The vampire smiled. She turned Riley’s head back to look into her deep, dark eyes. “Tango. Come back.” Riley blinked.
^ ^ ^
Tango’s smile matched, and maybe even outshone, Miranda’s. “It worked!” She threw her arms around the other woman. “Thank you, Miranda!” She turned to smile at the bemused pooka, sitting up and looking around. “Hello, Riley!”
“Hurray!” Tolly came bounding across the room like a big, friendly dog, and grabbed Riley tightly. “You’re back!”
Riley hugged the mad vampire in return, then looked around the empty court and back to Tango. “What happened?”
“Solomon kidnapped you....”
“I know that.” Riley shuddered. “The last thing I remember was having my mind rooted through like it was a garbage can.”
Miranda raised her eyebrow. “I didn’t know Solomon could do that.”
“Mages are always full of—” Riley really looked at the vampire for the first time. “You!” He scrambled away.
“Riley!” Tango grabbed him. “It’s all right. She’s on our side. She’s left the Bandog.”
The pooka glared at Miranda. “Really?”
Tolly didn’t give her a chance to reply. He twisted Riley around roughly, dragging him away from her. “Take the geasa off me, Riley,” he begged. “Please! Take it off before I go nuts!”
“All right, you’re released!” Tolly collapsed across Riley’s lap with a vast sigh. Riley looked around. “What the hell’s been happening?” His eyes went narrow. “What day is it?”
“The night before Highsummer.”
“Shit!” Riley pushed Tolly off him and scrambled down from the table. “Solomon was bragging to me. He’s going to...” ■
Tango stopped him. “Easy. We know what Solomon is planning.”
“How much?”
“Pretty much everything, we think.” Tango sat him back down again. “Take it slow. You’ve been asleep for five days.”
“Well, then I’m good and rested.” He got to his feet again and caught Tolly’s lolling head. “How much do they know about the other stuff?”
“Nothing. I couldn’t tell them anything, remember?” Red tears started to drip from Tolly’s eyes. “But if you know about the murders, guess who Solomon chose to do his dirty work.”
“No.” Riley glanced at Miranda.
She nodded. “Our pack.” Tango was surprised to hear a faint quaver in her voice. “Solomon came to me, then pretended to hire the pack.”
“No.” Riley stroked Tolly’s blond hair. “I’m sorry, Toll.”
Tolly twisted around to grab at Riley and cry into his chest. “And I couldn’t tell anyone!” Riley kept stroking his head comfortingly. He looked at Tango.
“So,” she asked him slowly, “why did Solomon kidnap you?”
“You didn’t get the yellow folder? Everything was in there. I thought they might get me sometime, so I wrote it all down, everything 1 had on Solomon. There was a Bandog bracelet with it, too — one that Tolly took from someone.”
She shook her head. “Jubilee... one of the Bandog searched your apartment while you were in San
Francisco and cleaned it out. I got your message to Epp, but the file was already gone. So was the bracelet.” She didn’t mention that the first Bandog bracelet she’d seen had been his. The one he had been wearing at Pan’s, the one she’d discovered later in his suitcase.
“Damn. How did you find me, then?”
“It’s a long story, and I don’t think we have time for it. The duke is probably on his way here.”
The door to the stairway outside unlocked suddenly. “No,” said Duke Michael as he walked into the court. Dex, Sin and Marshall slipped in around him. All three sidhe held naked swords. The redcap had a club. “He’s already here.” Behind the duke, Slocombe, the troll Tango had seen on her earlier visits to court, squeezed through the doorway.
Tango drew her breath in a hiss. “Your Grace, I’ve claimed sanctuary for myself and my allies under the Right of Safe Haven. Marshall must have told you that.” “He has,” replied the duke. His voice was calm, but there was a dangerous edge to it. “But the Right of Safe Haven applies only to Kithain — not to vampires. And for you and Riley to claim Safe Haven in my own court...” His smile was as sharp as the light that gleamed off the blade of his sword. “A criminal might as well seek sanctuary in a court of law.” With a swift gesture, he sent his knights and the night watchman to surround them.
Miranda stepped forward quickly. “Wait! There’s something you have to...”
Duke Michael cut her off with a flick of his sword through the air. “You have no voice in this court, vampire!” Tango felt a flare of Glamour and, abruptly, Miranda was silent. The other woman looked shocked.
Tango glanced at Riley. The pooka grimaced and pried himself out of Tolly’s grasp.
“Your Grace,” he said humbly. He dropped down on one knee before the duke, playing the role of the penitent courtier with perfect ease. “These vampires have risked their existence for us. We four bring news of a grave peril, a peril that kept me from my duties as your Jester.” He looked up. “Will you at least hear our news before you pass judgment?”
If Tango had been the duke, she would have run Riley through on the spot. Dex was making motions that suggested he would have done likewise, while Sin grimaced broadly. Riley’s act, however, was designed to appeal to Duke Michael and his sense of tradition. And it worked. The duke nodded.
Riley launched into a masterful account of the Bandog and their worship of Shaftiel. His words brought to life the eerie atmosphere of the ritual chamber in Solo
mon’s house. He described Solomon’s plans to create chaos in Toronto and summon Shaftiel’s voice. He very neatly glossed over the matter of how he and Tolly had come to be involved in the whole matter, instead focusing on his kidnapping and imprisonment, and on his rescue by Tango and Miranda. It was an incredibly good story for someone who had only heard the bare essence of Solomon’s plans — Tango suspected that if Riley had known the full events of the last few days and the facts of the penny murders, his story would have been even better.
When he had finished, she was in awe. Even Dex and Sin seemed spellbound. And the duke was nodding calmly. “So one of the Nephandi intends to speak to his dark master, and his plans menace
Toronto,” he said thoughtfully.
“Yes, Your Grace.”
“And you have been kidnapped by this Nephandus. You and Tango have done battle with him.”
“Not combat, your Grace, no. But we have met him face to face, and we oppose him.” .
Duke Michael’s sword descended ever so slowly to rest on Riley’s shoulder, right beside his neck. “But a Nephandus is a type of mage isn’t it, Riley?” His voice was suddenly cold and lethal. “You have had dealings with a mage?”
Tango blinked in outraged shock. “We didn’t have ‘dealings’ with Solomon! He kidnapped Riley. He’s ordered humans murdered. He wants to create riots and summon a demon!”
The duke glanced at her only briefly, then looked back down at Riley. “You are both bound to the rules of my court by your oaths. Dealings are dealings!” He tapped Riley with his sword. “You still have to answer for your actions in going to mages in San Francisco against my express orders.” He nodded again as Riley blanched. “Yes. I know about that. Tango told me. You forget that things still happen while we sleep.”
“What about the humans?” demanded Tango. “You can’t just...”
The duke turned his one-eyed gaze on her. “I have had enough of your shouting!” he snapped. “You have fought in my court, you have disobeyed me at every turn, you have resisted my judgments.” His sword came up to point at her. “It is not the place of a common nocker to question a sidhe! Humans are not my concern. Maintaining the order of my court and ruling the Kithain of Toronto is.” His sword described an arc
Pomegranates full and fine Page 31