A Local Habitation

FOURTEEN

“STOP SQUIRMING,” GORDAN SNAPPED, dabbing at my cheek with a cotton swab. She was holding a pair of stainless steel tweezers in her other hand. I eyed them warily. “You’ve got glass ground pretty deep in here. Do you want me to get it out, or do you want to spend the rest of your life looking like an order of meatloaf surprise?”

I glared at her, struggling to hold still. It was turning into a pitched battle between my nerves and the pain. The pain was winning. “That hurts.”

“Suck it up,” Quentin said. Gordan had already treated him, snickering about how much fun it was to watch a pretty boy mop the road with his face. It didn’t seem to have affected her work; she’d sterilized and bound his wounds quickly, even while she was mocking him. He was sitting on the counter, a cup of soup in his hands and a swath of gauze taped across his forehead, pushing his bangs up in a jagged line. He looked like he was recovering from his first bar fight.

I didn’t care; I was just glad he was awake. “Don’t make me come over there.”

“Gordan wouldn’t let you.”

“He’s right for once; I wouldn’t.” She smiled, showing the points of her teeth. “And you should be glad this hurts. The only way it wouldn’t hurt is if you were already dead.”

“Just be careful,” I said, hunching my shoulders. I still suspected her; I had no logical reason not to, save for the fact that I couldn’t figure out why she’d have killed her own best friend.

“I am,” she said. She put down the tweezers, selecting a strip of gauze. Her fingers were gentle as she bandaged my cheek, avoiding the spots where the skin was torn. For all her hostility, she knew what she was doing. “You’ll heal, but I don’t recommend sliding down any more driveways on your face.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” I said, dryly.

“Good. This was fun and all, but I don’t want to do it again.” She started to pack the kit with neat, rapid motions, tucking away gauze, ointment, and those awful sharp-edged tweezers. “Get some coffee or something. You look like the dead.”

“The soup’s good,” Quentin said, hefting his mug.

“You’re that worried about my welfare all of a sudden?” I looked at Gordan.

“Stuff it,” she said, not unkindly. “I just don’t want you upsetting Jan even more.”

“Right,” I said, standing and crossing to the coffeemaker. The pot was half- full; good. I didn’t want to bother brewing more. The bandages on my hands were light enough that I could handle it easily—I hadn’t lost any manual dexterity, and that was even better.

We were alone in the cafeteria, and the doors were locked with a warding charm of Jan’s design. I’d tried to open the door once, just out of curiosity, and found myself pushed gently but firmly back into the room. The seal was good. After dropping us off with Gordan, Jan and Terrie had disappeared to find Elliot and take care of the mess blocking the front gate.

“Toby?”

“Yeah?” The coffee was hot enough to be worth drinking. I took a long swallow and topped the cup off again. I was sure to need the caffeine.

“What are they going to do with the car?”

“Small questions, small minds,” Gordan muttered.

Ignoring her, I said, “Well, either they’re going to put up a really big illusion while they search for a giant can opener—”

“Yeah, right,” Quentin said, wrinkling his nose. Gordan snorted.

I settled next to him. “Like I said, either it’s giant can opener time, or they’ve got themselves a forklift.” My poor car.

“Will they call the cops?”

Gordan snorted again as I said, “Jan’s not going to call the police when she has a basement full of bodies.” That was good, since none of us wanted to be arrested for murder or carted off for dissection by the nice government men. That’s the kind of hospitality I can skip.

“Oh.” Quentin considered this. “What about our stuff?”

“Fireballs aren’t generally polite enough to leave everyone’s spare jeans intact.”

He sighed. “Great.”

“I know this is hard for you,” I said, fighting to keep from smiling, “but human teenagers wear the same clothes two days in a row all the time and it hasn’t killed any of them yet.” Quentin was doing the impossible: he was cheering me up. Well, him and the coffee.

Quentin wadded up his napkin and threw it at me. “Jerk.”

“Completely,” I said. “Besides. I spoke to Sylvester, and he said he was going to send someone to help.” And to take Quentin back to Shadowed Hills, although that could wait until he wasn’t still riding the adrenaline high of his very first auto accident. “So whoever it is, they’ll have a car, and they can get you some fresh clothes.”

“That won’t make trouble with Duchess Riordan?”

“Kid, at this point, she can cope.”

Gordan glared, opening her mouth. Whatever she was going to say was lost as the wards dissolved and the door swung open, letting Jan, Elliot, and Terrie into the room. Jan’s shoulders were squared and her chin was up; she looked like every other hero in Faerie, getting ready to strap on her shining armor and ride off to fight the dragon. That might be a problem, because the world has changed, and the heroes haven’t. Oh, they’re still the perfect solution when you’re dealing with dragons or damsels in distress—I figure that’s why Faerie keeps making heroes—but there’s a distinct shortage of problems that straightforward. Giants and witches, fairy-tale monsters . . . those are for heroes. For everything else, they have people like me.

All of us, even Gordan and Quentin, fell silent as we watched Jan walk to the coffeepot and fill a large mug, draining it dry before she turned toward me. Elliot tapped the top of the machine, which promptly started refilling the pot. Hearth magic has its uses, even if I couldn’t quite see how “making magic coffee” fell under the usual Bannick suite of abilities.

“So you think it’s one of us,” Jan said, without preamble.

How far can we push you before you snap, little hero? I wondered. Aloud, I said, “It’s the only answer that makes sense.” I felt Gordan’s glare on the back of my neck. Sorry, kid. Sometimes you have to tell the truth, even when you’re talking to heroes. Maybe especially when you’re talking to heroes.

Jan’s expression was bitter. I’ve seen that mixture of resignation and hopelessness before; it’s usually in my mirror. “You’re sure?”

“As sure as I can be.” I stood. I knew I was falling into a subservient posture, but I couldn’t help it. Half of me is fae, and the fae know how to obey their lords. “Monsters don’t lay that kind of trap.”

“I see.” She looked down at her hands. Her nails were bitten to the quick. “I trust everyone that works for me. I can’t imagine who would do this.”

What was I supposed to say? I exchanged a glance with Quentin. Jan built herself an ivory tower to keep the wolves out; she never dreamed they were already inside.

“I’m sorry,” I said. I meant it: no matter how much of an idiot she’d been, none of them deserved this. “We’ll do what we can.”

“I know.”

“And we’ll figure out what to do about the bodies.” I shook my head. “I still don’t understand what’s going on with them.”

“The night-haunts always come,” said Quentin.

“Maybe they aren’t really dead.” Jan looked at me, suddenly hopeful. “Can you bring them back? Wake them up?”

“No.” I didn’t know how to tell her how dead they really were. Jan hadn’t tried riding their blood; she hadn’t tasted the absence of life like sour wine. Quentin and I did, and we knew they were gone. Worse than gone: their blood was empty. Blood is never empty. It remembers all the little triumphs and tragedies of a lifetime, and it keeps them for as long as it continues to exist. Their blood remembered nothing. Whatever lives they’d lived and whoever they’d been, it was lost when they died. They took it into the darkness with them, out of Faerie forever.

Jan sighed. “I see. I . . . oak and ash, Toby, I’m sorry. You should never have gotten wrapped up in all of this.”

“My liege sent me, so I came.” I shrugged. “I’m not leaving until this is over.”

“And Quentin?” asked Terrie, biting her lip.

Quentin shot me a worried look. Clearly, he’d been wondering the same thing.

It was going to come out eventually. “Sylvester is sending someone to get him. Until then, we just need to keep him safe.”

“Toby—”

“She’s right,” said Terrie. “This isn’t your fight, Quentin. You don’t have to stay.”

“I want to,” he said.

“Hey, I say we let him,” said Gordan. “At least if the killer picks him, we get to live a little longer. Call it a learning experience.” You have to respect self-interest that focused. Most people at least try to pretend your welfare matters as much as their own.

“Gordan, that isn’t fair,” said Jan.

“Fair isn’t the point, and this isn’t a discussion. Sylvester’s calling him home. He’s going,” I said. Quentin’s expression was one of sheer betrayal. Tough. I wasn’t going to be responsible for getting him killed. “I’ll be here until this is over. You can’t get rid of me that easily.”

“I don’t think anyone ever has,” Gordan muttered. She’d given up glaring: now she just looked sullen.

“In the meantime,” I said, ignoring her, “we’re going to need all the things I asked for. The information on the victims, access to their work spaces, everything. I don’t want any of you going anywhere alone. Is it possible for you to go somewhere else in the County until this is fixed? Someplace outside the knowe?”

Jan shook her head. “No.”

“Jan—”

“April can’t leave.” The words were simple, quietly said, and utterly without hope. “I don’t have a portable server set up for her. If we went, we’d have to leave her behind. She’d be defenseless. I won’t leave my daughter.”

“And we won’t leave our liege,” said Elliot.

“If everyone dies, you lose the County. Let me call Sylvester. Let him help.”

“Dreamer’s Glass will see it as a threat.”

I eyed Jan. “Is there any way for us to get help without going to war?”

“No,” she said, simply. “There isn’t.”

“Maybe that’s what they want.” Gordan stood, crossing her arms over her chest. “How do we know Sylvester sent them? Maybe they’re here to make sure we don’t figure things out.”

“Gordan—” Jan began, and stopped, glancing toward me. They didn’t know. With the lines down between them and Shadowed Hills, there was no way they could. Much as I was coming to dislike her, I almost had to admire the way Gordan’s mind worked. She wanted us out, and she’d found one of the fastest ways to get what she wanted: calling our credentials into question. She was smirking now, visibly pleased.

“That’s crap,” snapped Quentin.

“He’s right,” I said. “If you want to work yourselves into a paranoid frenzy, go for it. Whatever. Just understand that it’s not my damn problem. The dead are my problem.”

Elliot had the grace to look embarrassed. “I’m sorry. It’s just that politically . . .”

“Politically, it would be a good idea to send saboteurs. We’re not them.”

“I believe you,” said Jan. Behind her, Gordan scowled.

“Good.” I walked to the coffee machine, aware of the eyes on my back. Let them stare. I needed to regroup before I started screaming at them. I’d been trying to ignore the political aspects, but they still mattered. No one should die for land. Oberon believed that: he fought to keep the playing field even. Some people say that’s why he disappeared—he saw what Faerie was becoming and couldn’t bear to watch. I wasn’t sure I could bear it, either. I didn’t have a choice.

“One way or another, I guess we’ll know your motives soon,” said Terrie.

I toasted her with my coffee cup. “Same to you.”

“We know the risks,” said Jan. Before the fae grew soft and secretive, the look in her eyes would have sent armies to die. There’s no stopping that kind of look; all you can do is stand back and hope the casualties will be light. “So where do we go from here?”

I met her eyes, and sighed. She wasn’t going to back down; we both knew it. The people that were going to leave were already gone, leaving only the loyal ones, the heroes, and the murderer. I’m not a hero; if I’m lucky, I never will be. I just do my job.

“You’re going to have to do everything I say,” I said.

“Of course,” she said, and smiled. It was a victor’s smile, and she was right to smile that way. We were staying at ALH, and they were counting on me to win their war. I just didn’t see a single way to do it.