Ironside

Chapter 14

When Kaye and Corny walked into the small apartment, Kate was lying on an air mattress in the middle of the floor. She was drawing in a magazine. Kaye could see that the little girl had blacked out Angelina Jolie's eyes and was in the process of drawing bat wings over Paris Hilton's shoulder blades.

"Cute kid," said Corny. "Reminds me of you."

"We got lo mein and veggie dumplings." Kaye shifted the bag in her arms. "Grab a plate; it's leaking on my hand.”

Kate scrambled to her feet and pushed back a tangle of dirty blond hair. "I don't want it.”

"Okay." Kaye set the cartons on the kitchen counter. "What do you want?”

"When's Ellen coming home?" Kate looked up, and Kaye could see her brown eyes were rimmed with red, as though she'd recently been crying.

"When her rehearsal's over." The first time Kaye had met Kate, the girl had hidden under the table. Kaye wasn't sure if this was better. "She said she wouldn't be that late, so don't freak out.”

"We don't bite," Corny put in.

Kate picked up her magazine and climbed up on Ellen's bed, skooching over to the far corner. She tore off tiny pieces and rolled them between her fingers.

Kaye sucked in a breath. The air in the apartment tasted like cigarettes and human girl, at once familiar and strange.

Kate scowled ferociously and threw the balled-up paper at Corny. He dodged.

Opening the refrigerator, Kaye took out a slightly withered orange. There was a block of cheddar with mold covering one end. Kaye chopped off the greenish fur and put the remaining lump on a piece of bread. "I'll grill you some cheese. Eat the orange while you wait.”

"I don't want it," Kate said.

"Just give her bread and water like the little prisoner she is." Corny leaned back on Ellen's bed, cushioning his head with a pile of laundry. "Man, I hate babysitting.”

Kate picked up the orange and threw it against the wall. It bounced like a leather ball, hitting the floor with a dull thud.

Kaye had no idea what to do. She felt paralyzed by guilt. The girl had every reason to hate her.

Corny switched on the tiny television set. The channels were fuzzy, but he finally found one that was clear enough to show Buffy staking three vampires as Giles clocked her with a stopwatch.

"Rerun," Corny said. "Perfect. Kate, this should teach you everything you need to know about being a normal American teenager." He looked up at Kaye. "There's even the sudden addition of a sister in it.”

"She's not my sister," the girl said. "She just stole my name.”

Kaye stopped, the words like a kick to the gut. "I don't have a name of my own," she said slowly. "Yours is the only one I've got.”

Kate nodded, her eyes still on the screen.

"So what was it like?" Corny asked. "Faerieland?”

Kate tore off a larger chunk of the magazine, crushing it in her fist. "There was a pretty lady who braided my hair and fed me apples and sang to me. And there were others—the goat-man and the blackberry boy. Sometimes they would tease me." She frowned. "And sometimes they would forget me.”

"Do you miss them?" he asked.

"I don't know. I slept a lot. Sometimes I would wake up and the leaves would have changed without me seeing them.”

Kaye felt cold all over. She wondered if she'd ever get used to the casual cruelty of faeries, and hoped she wouldn't. At least here, among humans, Kate would wake up each day until there was no more waking.

Kaye fidgeted with the sleeves of her sweater, worming her thumbs through the weave. "Do you want to be Kaye and I'll be Kate?”

"You're stupid and you don't even act like a faery.”

"How about I make you a deal," Kaye said. "I'll teach you about being human and you teach me about being a faery." She winced at how lame that sounded, even to her.

The frown hadn't faded from Kate's face, but she looked like she was thinking things through.

"I'll even help," Corny said. "We can start by teaching you human curse words. Maybe we could skip the faerie curses, though." Corny took a deck of cards out of his backpack. Printed on the back of each was a different cinema robot. "Or we could try poker.”

"You shouldn't bargain with me," the girl said, as though by rote. She looked smug. "Mortal promises aren't worth the hair on a rat's tail. That's your first lesson.”

"Noted," Kaye said. "And, hey, we could also teach you the joys of human food.”

Kate shook her head. "I want to play the cards.”

By the time Ellen walked in, Corny had beaten them both out of all the spare change they'd found in their pockets or under Ellen's bed. Law & Order was playing on the television, and Kate had agreed to eat a single fortune cookie. Her fortune had read: Someone will invite you to a karaoke party.

"Hey, one of the guys on the street was selling bootleg movies for two bucks," Ellen said, throwing her coat onto a chair and dumping the rest of her stuff onto the floor. "I got a couple for you kids.”

"Bet the back of someone's head blocks the screen," Kaye warned.

Ellen picked at the noodles on the counter. "Anyone eating these?”

Kaye walked over. "Kate didn't want them.”

Ellen lowered her voice. "I can't tell if she's just a picky eater or if it's some thing—doesn't like sauces, barely can stand cooked food at all. Not like you. You used to eat like you had a tapeworm.”

Kaye busied herself packing up what was left of the food. She wondered if every memory would snag, like wool on a thorn, making her wonder if it was a symptom of her strangeness.

"Everything okay?" Ellen asked her.

"I guess I'm not used to sharing you," Kaye said softly.

Ellen smoothed Kaye's green hair back from her head. "You'll always be my baby, Baby." She looked into Kaye's eyes a long moment, then turned and lit a cigarette off the stove. "But your kid-sitting days are just beginning."

Luis didn't want enchantments or glamours to pay for his brother's funeral, and so he got what he could afford—a box of ashes and no service. Corny drove him to pick them up from an ancient funeral director who handed over what looked like a cookie tin.

Although the sky was overcast, the snow on the ground had turned to slush. Luis had been in New York since the duel, dealing with clients and trying to hunt up enough paperwork to prove that Dave really was his brother.

"What are you going to do with the ashes?" Corny asked, climbing back into the car.

"I guess I should scatter them," said Luis. He leaned against the cracked plastic seat. Someone had tightened up his herringbone braids, and they shone like ropes of dark silk when he tilted his head. "But it freaks me out. I keep thinking of the ashes like powdered milk. You know, if I just add water, they'll reconstitute into my brother.”

Corny rested his hands against the steering wheel. "You could keep them. Get an urn. Get a mantel to put it on.”

"No." Luis smiled. "I'm going to take his ashes to Hart Island. He was good at finding things, places. He would have loved an entirely abandoned island. And then he'll be resting near my parents.”

"That's nice. Nicer than some funeral home with a bunch of relatives who don't know what to say.”

"It could be on New Year's. Like a wake.”

Corny nodded, but when he moved to put the key in the ignition, Luis's hand stopped him. When he turned, their mouths met.

"I'm sorry . . . that I've been," Luis said, between kisses, "distracted ... by everything. Is it morbid . . . that I'm talking . . . ?”

Corny murmured something that he hoped sounded like agreement as Luis's fingers dug into his hips, pushing him up so they could crush their bodies closer together.

Three days later they brought another package of meat to the mermaids for a ride to Hart Island. Corny had found a vintage blue tuxedo jacket to put on over a pair of jeans, while Luis slouched in his baggy hoodie and engineer boots. Kaye had borrowed one of her grandmother's black dresses and had pinned her green hair up with tiny rhinestone butterflies. The mermaids insisted on taking three of the hairpins along with the steak.

Corny looked back at the city behind them, shining so brightly that the sky over it looked almost like day. Even here, it was too light for stars.

"Do you think the coast guard is going to spot us?" Corny asked.

Luis shook his head. "Roiben said not." Kaye looked up. "When did you talk to him?" Touching the scar beside his lip ring, Luis shrugged. "He came to see me. He said that he formally extended his protection. I can go wherever I want and see whatever I see in his lands and no one can put out my eyes. I got to tell you, it's more of a relief than I thought it would be.”

Kaye looked down at her hands. "I don't know what I'm going to say to him tonight.”

"You're a consort. Shouldn't you be consorting?" Lutie asked. "Or maybe you can send him on a quest of his own. Make him build you a palace of paper plates.”

Kaye's mouth quirked at the corner.

"You should definitely ask for a better palace than that. Reinforced cardboard at least." Corny poked her in the side. "How did you solve his quest, anyway?”

She turned and opened her mouth. Someone shouted from the shore.

A girl with a head full of gingery stubble was calling to them as she dragged her canoe up onto the island. Beside her, a golden-eyed troll unpacked bottles of pink champagne and a package of snap-together plastic glasses. Another human girl danced on the sand, her paint-stained trench coat whirling around her like a skirt. She turned to wave when she spotted them.

Even Roiben was already there, leaning against a tree, his long woolen coat wet at the hem.

Kaye jumped out, grabbing the rope and splashing through the shallow water. She held the raft still enough for Luis and Corny to follow her.

"That's Ravus," Luis said, nodding in the direction of the troll. "And Val and Ruth.”

"Hey!" The stubble-headed girl—Val—called.

Luis squeezed Corny's hand. "Be right back.”

Luis walked over to them just as the stubble-haired girl popped a bottle of champagne. The cork shot out into the waves and she laughed. Corny wanted to trail after Luis, but he wasn't sure he was welcome.

Kaye tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and looked out at the waves. "You can see the whole city from here. Too bad we can't see the ball drop.”

"This reminds me of something in a fantasy novel," Corny told her. "You know, mysterious island. Me, with my trusted elven sidekick.”

"I'm your trusted elven sidekick?" Kaye snorted.

"Maybe not trusted," Corny said with a grin. Then he shook his head. "It's dumb, though. The part of me that loves this. That's the part that's going to get me killed. Like Dave. Like Janet.”

"Do you still wish you weren't human?”

Corny frowned, glanced toward Luis and his friends. "I thought those were our secret wishes.”

"You showed me it!”

Corny snorted. "Even so." He sighed. "I don't know. Right now, being human is actually working out for me. It's kind of a first. What about you?”

"I just realized that I don't have to do normal things, being a faery," Kaye said. "No need to get a job, right? I can turn leaves into money if I need it. No need to go to college—what would be the point? See above, no need for a job.”

"I guess education isn't its own reward?”

"You ever think about the future? I mean, you remember what you and Luis were talking about in the car?”

"I guess." He remembered that Luis had hoped Dave would go to school with him.

"I was thinking about opening a coffee shop. I thought that maybe we could have it be a front, and in the back there'd be a library—with real information on faeries—and maybe an office for Luis to break curses out of. You could work on the computers, keep the Internet running, make some searchable databases.”

"Yeah?" Corny could picture green walls and dark wood trim and copper cappuccino machines hissing in the background.

She shook her head. "You think it's crazy, right? And Luis would never go for it, and I'm probably too irresponsible anyway.”

He grinned hugely. "I think it's genius. But what about Roiben? Don't you want to go be the Faerie Queen or whatever?”

Across the field, Corny saw the troll rest a massive, monstrous hand on Luis's shoulder. Luis relaxed against the creature's bulk. The girl with the dark hair—Ruth—said something and Val laughed. Roiben stepped away from the trees and started toward them. Lutie sprung off Kaye's shoulder, launching herself into the air.

"I thought Luis hated faeries," Kaye said.

Corny shrugged. "You know us humans. We talk an enormous amount of shit."

The funeral was simple. They all stood in a semicircle around Luis as he held up the metal tin of ashes. They'd dug a shallow pit near the edge of the numbered grave markers and passed out champagne.

"If you knew my brother," Luis said, his hand visibly shaking, "you probably already have your own opinions about him. And I guess they're all true, but there doesn't have to be only one truth. I'm going to choose to remember David as the kid who found the two of us a place to sleep when I didn't know where to go, and as the brother that I loved.”

Luis opened the tin of ashes and dumped them. The wind caught some and lifted them into the air, while the rest filled the hole. Corny wasn't sure what he'd thought they would look like, but the dust was gray as an old newspaper.

"Happy New Year, baby brother," Luis said. "I wish you could drink with us tonight."

Roiben stood by the water, swigging out of a bottle of champagne. He'd loosed his salt white hair and it covered most of his face.

Kaye walked over to him, pulling out a noise-maker from her pocket and sticking it in her mouth. She blew and the long checkered paper tongue unfurled with a squeak.

He smiled.

Kaye groaned. "You really are a terrible boyfriend, you know that?”

He nodded. "A surfeit of ballads makes for odd ideas about romance.”

"But things don't work like that," Kaye said, taking the bottle from his hand and drinking from the neck. "Like ballads or songs or epic poems where people do all the wrong things for the right reasons.”

"You have completed an impossible quest and saved me from the Queen of the Faeries," he said softly. "That is very like a ballad.”

"Look, I just don't want you to keep hiding things from me," Kaye said, handing him back the bottle, "or hurt my feelings because you think it's going to keep me safe, or sacrifice yourself for me. Just tell me. Tell me what's going on with you.”

He tipped the champagne so that the liquid fizzed on the snow, staining it pink. "I taught myself to feel nothing. And you make me feel.”

"That's why I'm a weakness?" Her breath came out like a cloud in the icy air.

"Yes." He looked out at the black ocean and then back at her. "It hurts. To feel again. But I'm glad of it. I'm glad of the pain.”

Kaye took a step closer to him. The bright sky silvered his face with light and highlighted the way the points of his ears parted his hair. He looked both alien and utterly familiar.

"I know I failed you," Roiben said. "In the stories when you fall in love with a creature—”

"First I'm a thing, now I'm a creature?" Kaye said.

Roiben laughed. "Well, in the stories it is often a creature. Some kind of beast. A snake that becomes a woman at night, or someone cursed to be a bear until they can take off their own skin.”

"How about a fox?" Kaye asked, thinking of Silarial's story of the thornbushes.

He frowned. "If you like. You're crafty enough.”

"Yeah, let's say a fox.”

"In those stories, one is often asked to do something unimaginably terrible to the creature. Cut off its head, say. A test. Not a test of love, a test of trust. Trust lifts the spell.”

"So you think that you should have cut off my head?" Kaye grinned.

He rolled his eyes. "I should have accepted your declaration, whether I thought it was wise or no. I loved you too much to trust you. I failed.”

"Good thing I'm not really a fox," Kaye said. "Or a snake or a bear. And good thing I'm sneaky enough to figure out a way around your dumb quest.”

Roiben sighed. "Once more I mean to save you, and yet you come to my rescue. If you hadn't warned me about Ethine, I would have done just what Silarial expected.”

She looked down so he wouldn't see her cheeks go pink with pleasure. She stuck her fingers into the pockets of her coat and was surprised to feel a circle of cold metal.

"I made you something," Kaye said, pulling out the bracelet of green braid wrapped in silver wire.

"This is your hair?" he asked.

"It's a token," Kaye said. "Like from a lady to a knight. For when I'm not around. I was going to give it to you before, but I never quite got around to it.”

He ran his fingers over it and looked at Kaye, astonished. "And you made it? For me?”

She nodded, and he held out his hand so she could clasp it on him. His skin felt hot to the brush of her fingers.

Across the water, along the shore, fireworks went off. Streaks of fire ballooned into carnations of light. Golden explosions rained around them. She looked over at him, but he was still looking at his wrist.

"You said it was for when you're not around. Will you not be around?" he asked her when he looked up.

She thought about the owl-eyed faery in Silarial's court and what he'd told her. They say that nameless things change constantly—that names fix them in place like pins. Kaye didn't want to be fixed in place. She didn't want to pretend to be mortal when she wasn't, nor did she want to have to leave the mortal world. She didn't want to belong to one place or be one kind of thing.

"How will you rule both Courts?" she asked instead of answering his question.

Roiben shook his head. "I'll try to keep one foot on each side, balance on the knife edge between both courts for as long as I can. There will be peace so long as I can hold them. Provided I don't declare war on myself, that is.”

"Is that likely?”

"I must confess to a good deal of self-loathing." He smiled.

"I was thinking of opening a coffee shop," Kaye said quickly. "In Ironside. Maybe help people with faerie problems. Like Luis does. Maybe even help faeries with faerie problems.”

"You know I just made a very advantageous bargain predicated on the fact that no faery wants to live in the city." He sighed and shook his head as if he'd just realized that arguing with her was useless. "What will you call your coffee shop?”

"Moon in a Cup," she said. "Maybe. I'm not sure. I was thinking that maybe I could move out of my grandmother's—spend half my time working in the shop and half my time in Faerie, with you. I mean, if you don't mind me being around.”

He smiled at that and it seemed like a real smile, with no shadows at the edges. "Like Persephone?”

"What?" Kaye leaned in and skimmed her hand under his coat, tracing the vertebrae of his back. His breath hitched.

Roiben let his hand fall lightly, hesitantly, across the wings of her shoulders. He sighed like he'd been holding his breath. "It's a Greek story. A human one. The King of the underworld—Hades—fell in love with a girl, Persephone. She was a goddess too, the daughter of Demeter, who controlled the seasons and the harvests.

"Hades stole Persephone away to his palace in the underworld and tempted her with a split-open pomegranate, each seed shining like a ruby. She knew that if she ate or drank anything in that place she would be trapped, but somehow he persuaded her to eat a mere six seeds. Thereafter, she was doomed to spend half of each year in the underworld, one month for one seed.”

"Like you're doomed to spend half your time dealing with the Bright Court and half with the Night Court?" Kaye asked.

Roiben laughed. "Very like.”

Kaye looked at the far shore, where fireworks still heralded the New Year above the jagged teeth of buildings, and then toward where Corny and the others blew noisemakers and drank cheap champagne from plastic goblets.

She slid out of Roiben's arms and whirled on the sand of the beach. The wind blew off the water, numbing her face. Kaye laughed and spun faster, gulping the cold briny air and smelling the faint firework smoke. Pebbles crunched under her boots.

"You still haven't told me," he said softly.

She stretched her arms out over her head, then came to an abrupt halt in front of him. "Told you what?”

He grinned. "How you managed to complete the quest. How you claimed to be able to lie.”

"Oh. It's simple." Kaye lay down on her back on the snowy beach, looking up at him. "This is me," she said, her voice full of mischief as she reached out with one long-fingered hand. "See? This is me lying.”