Sixty-One Nails cotf-1

by Mike Shevdon

  While the nurse assessed the patient and arranged for the debris to be cleaned up, Claire, Blackbird and I moved into the empty rest-room across the hall.

  "We are to meet the smith at the Royal Courts of Justice at noon tomorrow," Blackbird told Claire. "We are going to need the sixty-first nail, the one that's different from the others. Can you get it for us?"

  "The Courts are closed on the weekends and they don't encourage visitors for all sorts of reasons."

  "We need it tomorrow. Without it the Seventh Court will be able to come when they want, how they want. What they did to Jerry will be the least of it. We need the nail."

  "I should be able to get it for you in the morning. They're used to me coming in at weekends to do things for Jerry. I can go into the office and collect it then. You'll still have time to meet the smith at noon."

  "That will do."

  "Are you going to stay with Jerry until then?" Claire asked.

  "Jerry will be OK for now. Her hold on him is broken. I think he'll be safe enough. It's you I'm worried about."

  "Me?"

  "Without you we can't get the nail and without the nail all the rest is for nothing. If the worst came to the worst we could get someone else to play Remembrancer, but you don't have a successor, do you, Claire?"

  "I didn't think I needed one until recently."

  "There'll be time to think about that later. For now, we need to keep you safe."

  "Will it be OK to go back to my flat?" She looked worried now.

  "Probably, though it might be best if Niall and I checked it out first."

  "Very well. What will you do then? Do you want to stay the night?"

  "Are you sure you don't mind us being in your home?"

  "I'd rather you and Niall were with me than I was on my own, given what you've said. It's only a sofa bed, but it's comfortable enough for a night."

  "Then we will stay the night with you. Thank you."

  "Give me two minutes to call for a cab and let Elizabeth know where we're going." She turned away, then paused. "You are OK with a cab, aren't you?"

  "Yes. That's how we got here."

  She smiled. "Of course."

  We waited while Claire took her leave of the people across the corridor. A glance through the open door showed Jerry sitting up, his daughter perched on the bed beside him, pale but smiling. When Claire came back, Elizabeth was with her.

  "I wanted to thank you, both of you, for what you did for us," she said.

  "You're welcome."

  "You said there would be a price to pay?" She sounded hesitant, as if she was unsure what form that price might take.

  "I did, and if it hadn't have been for Niall's quick thinking the price would be a sight higher. We were lucky."

  "I think I know that now. Who would have believed? Well, anyway." She shook her head.

  "If your husband is at the ceremony on Tuesday, then I will take the debt as paid," Blackbird told her.

  "He'll be there. I don't think you could prevent him. Still, I feel I owe you."

  "Don't offer more than you are asked for, Elizabeth," Blackbird told her. "There are those that will take all you have and more besides, if you let them."

  "Well, thanks then, from all of us."

  We said our goodbye and followed Claire down to reception. While Claire handed in her security badge we slipped easily past the receptionist and waited outside for her to follow. She joined us on the pavement and after a few moments a minicab pulled up alongside the kerb. Claire sat in the front with the driver while we took the back seat. We were driven through the darkened streets without speaking, each wrapped in our own thoughts. After a while, Blackbird's hand sought mine and I held it. It was easier in the dark when I couldn't see how old and wrinkled it was.

  When we got to the flat, Blackbird went inside first. She walked around, trailing her fingers on the surfaces and walking softly as if listening for something. She vanished into the other rooms while we waited in the hallway.

  When she reappeared she nodded. "They have not been here."

  Claire pushed the door closed behind us, locking it and bolting it.

  "There, that should hold them." She looked at me. "It will hold them, won't it?"

  "Here, let me." I placed my hand on the door. It was more solid than the internal door to my bedroom, but I sealed it in the same way, imagining nails driven deep into the wall around it, sealing it shut. "That will give us some time if they come tonight."

  "Time for what?" she asked.

  "To run," I told her. "Is there another way out?"

  "There's a fire door at the back of the kitchen with stairs down."

  "Then we'd better seal that too. A way out is a way in."

  "What if they come to both doors at once?"

  "Then we have a problem. Try not to worry about it."

  Claire gave me a wan smile and then busied herself putting away her things and getting towels and bedding for us. I sat on the sofa, politely refusing offers of hot chocolate and cheese sandwiches while Blackbird followed her around, collecting guest towels and sheets. I would not have thought it possible for someone to fall asleep amid such a commotion, but I must have nodded off. When I opened my eyes, Blackbird was sitting quietly on the floor next to the sofa that I had been sleeping on, watching me. Someone had put a quilt over me at some point and it was tangled around my legs.

  "Hello," I said, blearily.

  "Hello." Her voice was soft and almost inaudible.

  "Have you been there long?" I asked her.

  She looked comfortable enough, cross-legged on the rug, her elbows resting on her knees, chin on her hands.

  "A little while."

  I stretched the muscles that had tightened from sleeping in an awkward position, sticking my bare feet out from under the quilt.

  "Are you OK? Did I steal the bed? You should have woken me.

  "You looked so peaceful there. I thought I'd let you sleep."

  "Have you had any sleep?"

  "Not really. I napped for a while."

  "What time is it?"

  "It's nearly ten o'clock. If you hadn't stirred soon I would have woken you."

  "I don't remember falling asleep."

  "I went into the kitchen with Claire and when I came back you were snoring."

  "Oh. Sorry."

  "Don't be, you needed it."

  Having woken up a bit more, I took another look at her. It was the older Blackbird but she looked different. She certainly didn't look as tired as I would have done after only a couple of hours sleep.

  "Are you OK?" I repeated. "You look different."

  "It's my glamour. It's changed a little."

  "It looks fine," I reassured her.

  "Too fine. I've lost about ten years."

  That was what was different. She definitely looked younger. I remembered it had taken me a while to notice a similar change in myself yesterday.

  "Why?"

  "I'm having difficulty maintaining it. I keep slipping back into habits I lost long ago, things I thought I'd left behind. I haven't lost control of it since I was a child, but I'm definitely having problems now."

  "Why?"

  "I don't know." It wasn't quite the truth.

  I pushed myself upright, scrubbing my hands through my hair, trying to clear my head.

  "It's about time Veronica had an accident," she told me.

  "What?"

  "Or perhaps she should get an offer from an obscure American university to go and teach history there."

  "I don't understand. You're leaving?" I couldn't believe she was saying this to me.

  "No, silly. I'm not leaving. I'm just changing."

  "But why?"

  "Well, for one thing I can't carry on as Veronica with a boyfriend who looks thirty years younger than me without causing a bit of a scandal, can I?"

  "I suppose not." At least she wasn't leaving.

  "And then there's my glamour. If I can't reliably maintain it then my options ar
e limited, at least as far as mixing in with society is concerned."

  "But why wouldn't you be able to maintain it? You always have before."

  "I'm not sure." Again, there was the half-truth.

  "Blackbird, what are you not telling me?" It was going to be easier to just ask outright.

  She was silent for a long while and I began to think she wasn't going to answer. I pushed my fingers through my hair, trying to gather my wits together.

  "It can happen," she said. "I've been hiding, as Kareesh calls it, posing as Veronica for forty or more years now. Before that there was another lady, just as acceptable and unremarkable. There was lots of confusion after the Second World War, so it wasn't difficult to appear with few records and no papers. When she got too old to work, I swapped her for Veronica. The original Veronica died of a drug overdose in the Sixties. She was bright enough to be university material and alone enough so that she wouldn't be missed. It was easy to bring her life down to London and carry it on."

  "But she's too old now?"

  "Sometimes when things change, it's better to go with them rather than fight against them," she explained quietly.

  "I don't know what you mean. What are you saying?"

  "I'm not sure," she said again.

  "Help me out here, Blackbird. I know I'm never at my best when I've just woken up, but I'm just not getting it. What are you not telling me?"

  "I'll get you some coffee," she offered and stood up smoothly, padding out of the room towards the kitchen.

  I untangled myself from the quilt and pulled my trousers on. I had obviously been so deeply asleep that I hadn't noticed someone had taken them off. I hoped it was Blackbird rather than Claire. I buckled my belt and followed Blackbird into the kitchen. She was busily making coffee.

  "Blackbird, please talk to me."

  She stopped and turned to me. She looked pensive.

  "What is it?" I asked again.

  "Sometimes the Feyre lose control of their glamour when they feel very strongly about something, or someone. It's a little like I told you on the first morning. If you feel fear, or lust, or envy."

  "You feel envious?"

  "No, but there are other feelings besides lust and envy."

  "Oh." I wasn't sure how to react to that. I felt very strongly about Blackbird too, but was I ready to hang a name on those feelings?

  "Or," she added, "they can lose control of their magic when their bodies change in response to other things." She turned back to the coffee.

  "What kind of other things?"

  She muttered something into the coffee pot.

  "Sorry?"

  "I said, it can happen during pregnancy." She turned around with a look of terrible uncertainty on her face.

  "But you said it was too early, that you weren't even fertile." I was struggling to deal with the implications of this news.

  "I said I didn't know when I was fertile and that it was too early to know. I'm still not sure."

  "We only did it once." I was trying to get my thoughts straight in my head.

  "Actually, from a biological perspective we did it four times, Niall. But I don't think biology was keeping score."

  "So how do you feel?"

  "I told you, I'm fine, I just feel different."

  "Do you want to sit down?"

  "No. No I don't want to sit down. Nor do I want to have my back rubbed. If I am pregnant then I am only just so. It could be weeks before anyone can actually see a difference."

  "Of course. I knew that."

  "Only, when we discussed this," she continued, "you said you weren't ready to be a father again and I just wanted you to know. You don't have to stay."

  "What?"

  "You don't have to be with me, just because I'm pregnant."

  "Blackbird, of course I'll stay with you. Why would I leave?"

  "I release you from that commitment. Things are different now."

  "Yes, they are, but not in that way."

  "You said you weren't ready to start another family and you didn't think about the consequences."

  "Whoa. You just took me by surprise, that's all. I'd barely gotten used to the idea that you wanted to, well, you know. I just wasn't prepared."

  "And because of that I won't hold you to it. You can leave."

  "Don't you want me to stay?"

  "If you want to, Niall, but only if you want to."

  "I want to. I don't want to leave you, especially like this."

  "Really? Think about this and all it means before you decide. Your daughter would have a half-brother or sister. The child will probably be Fey, while your daughter's genes may never express themselves and she may die human, long before you do. This baby may not even look human, particularly to her. Bringing up a Fey child will be different and is bound to split your attention away from your daughter. Is that what you want?"

  I thought about it, treating her questions with the seriousness and consideration they deserved, but no matter what else I thought about it, I could not see myself walking away from her and a child that was ours.

  I thought about my daughter, fourteen years old and almost a young woman. How would she cope with a younger halfbrother or sister? What did Blackbird mean when she said it wouldn't look human? What did Fey babies look like? All of these questions assailed me, but they didn't change how I felt. If she was pregnant then I would stay with Blackbird and see our baby into the world. My daughter could learn to live with a half-sibling if she had to. Other children did.

  "I'm staying. If you'll have me?"

  "You're sure."

  "Of course I'm sure. What did you think I would say?"

  "I didn't know, Niall, truly. And I may not be pregnant after all, but I wanted you to have the choice."

  "Why? Is it so terrible to have a Fey child?"

  "Well, there's the mewling, screaming bundle that cries when it's not sleeping. You feed one end and wipe the other and if you're lucky you might get a full night's sleep once a month." She smiled at me. Some of the uncertainty had gone from her eyes and was replaced by something warmer, something that made me want to hold her.

  I held out my arms and she curled herself inside them so I could rest my chin on the top of her head. We were standing there holding each other quietly when Claire came in.

  "Oh," she said. "I'm sorry. I didn't realise you were…" She stopped and looked at us, as if taking in what we were doing.

  "I'm sorry. I'm interrupting."

  She turned away, but Blackbird called her back.

  "It's your kitchen, Claire." She untangled herself from me. "I was trying to make coffee. Would you like coffee?"

  Claire turned back and paused in the doorway, there not being room for three of us. "Yes," she said in a distracted manner. "Yes, that would be nice."

  Blackbird pottered around, boiling water and putting coffee into a cafetière she'd found in a cupboard.

  "I hope you don't mind us making ourselves at home like this," she said to Claire.

  "Not at all, I was…"

  Blackbird shimmered and shifted where she stood, her image blending and shifting between Veronica, the younger Blackbird and various other women I'd never seen. It shifted back to Veronica and held.

  She turned to me. "You see?"

  "What was… What did…?" Claire stepped back slightly as if it might be infectious. "What just happened?"

  "It's OK," I reassured her. "No harm done," I said to Blackbird.

  Her form shimmered again and melted into the young Blackbird.

  "This might be easier, in the circumstances," Blackbird muttered through tight lips.

  She carried on making coffee as if nothing had changed. Claire looked as if she expected Blackbird to leap over and bite her. I slipped past Blackbird.

  "She's not having a good day," I told Claire. "Lack of sleep after last night probably isn't helping. Give her a moment or two and a cup of coffee and she'll be fine."

  "The coffee is for you," Blackbird called after
me as I shepherded Claire back into the living room. "I don't want any this morning, it tastes acrid."

  I stopped. Claire looked at me. "It's the only coffee I have," she explained.

  "No, sorry. The coffee's fine, really. It's just Bla– Veronica! She's having one of her moods."

  "She has moods?" Claire asked, warily.

  "She'll be fine. I promise."

  Claire moved over to the windows and let in the daylight. She opened the window, letting in city noises and fresh air. Then she went to a vacant armchair, perched on the lip of the seat and looked uncomfortable.

  "I'm very grateful for what you did last night," she began.

  "But you would rather we went sooner than later," I finished for her.

  She looked crestfallen at what I had said, then grateful and relieved.

  "It's not that I don't trust you." She looked embarrassed as she realised I would be able to hear the truth of that statement.

  "All right," she admitted. "I am really grateful you stayed last night. If I had come back here alone after what happened yesterday, I don't think I could have slept a wink. It really helped. It's just that with you being what you are, I feel nervous around you."

  "That's OK. We all have to go soon anyway to get the nail and we are grateful for your hospitality. We just need a little while to get ourselves together, that's all."

  Blackbird appeared through the doorway, handed a mug of coffee to me. "Here, you had better have this back." She passed me the Dead Knife, holding it gingerly by the wood of the handle so her skin didn't touch the blade. I took it from her, watching the blade shimmer and fall into blackness.

  "May I use your shower?" she said to Claire.

  Claire was distracted by the black blade. "Of course. Help yourself."

  "Thanks." She went towards the bathroom.

  There was a pause while Claire waited for the bathroom door to close.

  "You found the Highsmiths, then?" Claire commented, nodding towards the knife.

  "We did. That's why we need you to get the nail."

  "I see. You don't have to tell me, of course, but does it bother you when she's a pensioner one minute and a girl the next?"

  "I'm getting used to it," I replied. "You don't have anything I could wrap this in, do you?" I indicated the knife.

  Claire stood and went into the hallway. She returned a moment later with a towelling cloth. "It's an old one, too big for a flannel and too small for a towel." She passed it to me.