Wander The Night, page 25
Sophie told me it’s healthy to sit with your grief and come to terms with it. I disagree. If I stop to think about it too long, I fear I won’t resurface. Grief will have to wait. Reaction is all I can manage for now. That and sleeping too much, while the others help with preparations I can’t organize alone.
The problem at the moment is that Tamary has it in her head that she’s coming along. Not just to Scotland, no. She wants to go into Faerie. I’ve no idea why. Sophie is adamant that the idea is a terrible one. I don’t disagree on this one. Surely, she has worked with enough of us not to assume our realm is some sparkly, magical land filled with castles and unicorns. And I have it straight from the source that Mab will not hesitate to kill me should our paths cross or she find out I’ve come back against my exile. I have no doubt the sentiment will also apply to any traveling companions I happen to have.
From downstairs, a door slams. No more voices are audible.
I make my way down the stairs, cautious of what I might encounter. When they were kids, I’m told, Hattie saw fit to bless Sophie with the use of magic, albeit limited, and an angry witch isn’t something I’m keen to encounter recklessly.
“Everyone still alive down here?” I ask as I round the corner.
Sophie is sitting at the kitchen table, staring into a cup of what is most likely tea. She looks up and smiles at me when I enter the room, but there’s an edge to the smile that hints at unsaid thoughts. “Morning, dear.”
I take a seat across from her at the table. “You two come to a consensus yet?”
She shakes her head, but it seems more in frustration than in answer. “That girl. She thinks she knows what she’s getting into because she’s been working with Exiles.”
“She’s smart. Surely she knows it’s not the same.”
“That’s what I told her. She said she knows.” Sophie takes a deep breath and lets it out in a sigh. “But she’s grown enough to make her own decisions.” Quieter, almost low enough I can’t hear, she adds, “I suppose it was bound to happen anyway.”
I tilt my head and study her, brow furrowed. “What do you mean by that?”
Sophie regards me from across the table, decisions warring behind her eyes. “It’s not my place to tell. Tamary will share if she wishes.” She stands up from her seat. “If you are so curious as you seem, you might ask her what it is that drives her to surround herself with the fey. In any case, she’ll be back soon.”
She doesn’t wait for a reply. She instead turns her focus to making breakfast, which is soon revealed to consist of far more food than one should be offered as a first meal of the day.
Somewhere around the point where she’s trying to insist I need a third helping of everything—which I politely refuse, to her dismay—I hear the front door open and close. Tamary comes into view in the living room and then joins us in the kitchen. Trailing behind her is a familiar face.
“How’s exiled life treating you?” Finon asks from behind a feral grin. The Exile King of Chicago—Tamary told me he made up the title himself—looks too self-satisfied for comfort.
“Depends,” I say, standing from my seat at the table. “How’s it supposed to be treating me?”
The goblin laughs, green ears twitching in amusement. “Fair point, fair point.” He unshoulders a black duffel bag and drops it to the floor. “Maybe this will help make up for it.”
He kneels to unzip the bag, and I feel like I’m in a Mission: Impossible film. The bag is filled with weapons. Mind you, it’s not filled with modern weapons. No sniper rifles or handguns or grenades. Rather, it’s filled with disassembled recurve bows and bundled arrows and sheathed daggers.
Finon removes two swords from the straps across his back and lays them among the stash. “Well,” he says, straightening and waving a hand over his wares, “choose your weapon.”
I cringe, and Tamary looks him dead in the eye and says, “You’ve been waiting to say that, haven’t you?”
He grins with sharp teeth. “Maybe.”
Tamary sighs, but there’s a hint of endearment in it.
I examine the array but don’t touch anything. “Fey-made or steel?”
Finon raises hairless brows, eyes heavy-lidded with disbelief. “You think I’d offer you anything but the finest?”
“I know you’re a businessman, and you didn’t answer the question,” I say.
Tamary gives an amused snort.
Sophie clears her throat. “Tamary, dear, could I have a quick word?”
Tamary makes a disgruntled noise in her throat, an annoyed, teenager sound, but follows Sophie out of the room anyway.
Finon watches them with eyes the color of pitch. “Those two fighting about something again?”
This has happened before then. Not surprising.
“Tamary wants to go with me into Faerie,” I say. “Sophie thinks it’s a bad idea.”
“Oh, it’s a horrible idea,” Finon says, “but Tam can manage well enough.” There’s a beat, and he adds, “Probably.”
I scowl at the level of flippancy in his voice. “You still didn’t answer my question.”
“Geez, okay. It’s fey-made,” he says. “Persistent, aren’t you?”
I shrug and start sifting through the duffel bag. “I’ve survived this long.”
“Not for lack of others’ attempts.”
“Bold words to someone with this many sharp objects within reach.”
From the corner of my eye, I see Finon take a step backwards. “Woke up on the wrong side of the bed, did you?”
“Wrong side of the realms, if we’re looking for accuracy.” I study a dagger before sliding it back into its sheath. “Besides, doesn’t everyone threaten their allies?” I flash him a smile full of teeth.
He snorts. “Everyone fey, at least.”
Tamary and Sophie come back into the room. Tamary doesn’t look ready to murder anyone, so perhaps she and Sophie came to a condition she agrees with.
Tamary kneels next to me to rifle through the duffel bag. “Finon, you better have brought me a decent sword,” she says, grinning to herself with suspicious self-satisfaction.
“What are you so cheerful about?” I ask, regarding her with curiosity.
She glances up at me, dark eyes bright with excitement. “Nain said that I’m an adult and free to make my own decisions. She’s letting me go into Faerie with you.”
Before I can filter myself, I blurt, “That’s a terrible idea.”
“You’re going back in. Can’t be such an awful place.”
“It’s my home.”
She makes a face I can’t quite decipher. “We all have our reasons.”
Sophie interrupts before I can delve into the response. “Your flight is this evening, remember. I’d suggest you both make your selections so that Finon might be on his way.”
Finon’s mouth is curved into an intrigued smile, but he doesn’t say anything. He’s a strange character. I still don’t understand him.
Tamary stands, one of the swords in her hands. She slides it free of its leather sheath and examines the blade with a careful eye. She tests the weight and balance with a familiarity that suggests some sort of training. It’s odd. I would have thought she’d have mentioned that.
“This one is nice,” she says, slipping the sword back into the sheath. “It’s not cursed, is it?” She says it jokingly, but she’s staring at Finon like she means it.
“Paranoid, the both of you,” Finon mutters, shaking his head at the floor. “No, it’s not cursed.”
“I’ll take it then,” she says, far too satisfied for comfort. “I’ll be packing if anyone needs me.”
“Ach-y-fi,” Sophie says. She turns her eyes upward like she’s searching for a divine source of strength. Then she follows Tamary out of the room.
Finon and I are left alone once more. The goblin takes a seat on the couch, leaning back into the cushions and closing his eyes.
Without the distraction of conversation, I pull out one of the dismantled bows and begin reassembling it. When I finish, it proves to be a beautiful piece, pale wood with a fur-padded shelf and a deep indigo string. I find an arm-guard and a fur-lined glove next. In the bottom of the duffel, a leather quiver, inlaid with the same shade of blue, is filled with sturdy yet supple arrows. I add that to my gains, as well as a pair of ivory daggers with bronze hilts.
“Not keen on the sword?” Finon asks.
I startle slightly. I’d thought him asleep.
“Not really my forte,” I say, standing back up with my arms full of weaponry, “I tried to learn as a kid, but I never quite got the hang of it. Least of all, not well enough to save my life against someone keen to take it. At the most, I might be able to manage a brief yet dramatic diversion.”
Finon levers himself off the couch. “I’m rather of the mind nearly everything you do could be managed in some form of dramatics or other.”
“I’m choosing to take that as a compliment,” I say.
He shrugs, bending down to collect the duffel and remaining sword. “It might as well be one anyway, I suppose.” He straightens and looks me over before his eyes finally settle on mine. “You look after that girl. And yourself. Faerie politics get bloody.”
“Don’t I know it.”
“You have all your paperwork? It took some doing to get it all.”
I nod. This isn’t the first time he has reminded me just how tedious it was to gather real documentation—well, real fake documentation, but not glamoured—ID, passport, tickets, and the rest. “I have everything. What about Tamary though? She won’t have what she needs.”
Finon reaches into a jacket pocket and pulls out a small stack of papers. He hands them over with a smug smile. “I had them made just in case. She tends to get what she wants.”
“I shudder to think what satisfaction you’re gaining from all this.”
He grins, wild-eyed. “Just give ’em hell.”
I grin back, feeling slightly manic. I intend to do just that.
SCENE 12
By the time it comes for us to leave for our flight, Sophie has fed and fussed over us enough to last the next week. I feel ready to hibernate, except it’s not winter right now and pucks don’t hibernate. But I digress. I’m stuffed full enough that my brain function feels diminished.
Tamary and I have spelled backpacks, she packed with too much and I with too little but all I have. Sophie spelled each pack to fit more inside than it should be able to. Tamary has managed to find room to pack four outfits, an extra pair of shoes, toiletries, a flashlight, a box of matches, and her sword from Finon. Sophie has also prepared several travel meals and first-aid kits for both of us, which all fit as well.
Meanwhile, my own bag contains far less. My backpack, a spare Tamary has used for classes, wouldn’t have needed the spell if not for the arrows. Yet, it is nice to carry even the clothes I left Faerie in, which are now clean and mended with the help of a certain witch’s magic.
Strange quests seem to be a common occurrence in this house. The clothes I’m currently wearing, and those I’ve worn for the last two weeks, have been borrowed from the upstairs guest room I’ve been occupying. The dresser and closet are filled with an array of all sizes and styles for any gender. When the first thing I tried on didn’t later turn into rags, I figured the clothes were free of glamour and safe to wear. All the same, I still find it odd to wear clothing that’s truly human and not just glamoured to look that way.
Before we get into the car, Sophie hands me a full bottle of one of her magic concoctions, a potion of sorts she’s developed to help exiled fey deal with iron sickness. I haven’t asked what’s in it—and don’t want to, considering how bad it tastes—but whatever it’s made from works pretty well.
“Drink this on the way,” Sophie says. “Not all at once, but do finish it by the time we get to the airport.”
I take the bottle, confused. “The whole thing?” Typically, only a few sips will be enough to last me for several days.
“We’re riding in a car,” she says, “after which, you’ll be in an airplane for a roughly twelve-hour flight. The plane itself may not bother you, but all the technology everyone is sure to have certainly will. The amount of iron in a cell phone or laptop may seem minimal, but multiply that by a hundred and add cabin pressure” She lifts an eyebrow pointedly. “Trust me, dear. You’ll want to drink the whole thing.”
The implications of being in the air in a giant metal bird clarify sharply. “Point taken.”
So I finish the bottle on the way to the airport.
By the time we pull into the parking lot, I’m feeling pleasantly buzzed. Sophie hugs her granddaughter—“Be safe, cariad”—and pats me on the cheek in a stereotypical, old-person fashion—“Look out for yourselves”—before Tamary and I go inside the airport.
By the time we get through security—with weapons, because the glamour on them isn’t picked up by human technology—and into the seating area to wait to board the plane, I’m feeling incredibly drunk.
It must show. Tamary leans over the chair and into my face. “Are you listening to me?”
I lean back, blinking. “What?”
“I said your name three times,” she says, reclining back in her seat.
My mind supplies a smart response—“I suppose that is the charm”—but my mouth can’t seem to figure out how to say the words.
Tamary looks bemused. “Did you really drink that whole thing?”
I nod, or at least, I think I do.
She huffs a laugh. “This should be fun.”
By the time we board the plane—
Well, I don’t actually remember anything of the flight beyond finding our seats.
Lucidity starts to return to me as Tamary is shaking me awake and gathering our bags.
“We’re in Dublin already?”
“Welcome to Glasgow, actually.” She takes me by the elbow and leads me off the plane. “I know this is probably irrelevant to you, but that was a really long flight. Almost twelve hours, plus the stop in Dublin. I’m pretty sure you were sleepwalking during that part.”
I stagger along beside her. “Oh.”
She glances sidelong at me. “You were really out of it. More than Nain meant you to be maybe.” She guides our two-person entourage toward the doors out of the airport. “She should be selling that stuff for anesthesia.” Tamary hails a nearby taxi. “I hope it’ll last a couple more hours.”
I climb into the backseat, and she follows, sliding in across the bench seat.
“Where to?” the driver asks, his accent far removed from that of Chicago.
“Rashfield, please,” Tamary says.
“Yes, ma’am,” he replies and shifts the car into gear.
Over the next hour and a half, Sophie’s potion starts wearing off quicker and quicker. By the time we reach the town, I’m miserable with the metallic air. Head between my knees, I vaguely register the hand against my back.
“He all right?” the driver asks.
Tamary’s hand moves in small circles. “He gets car sick,” she lies.
The driver hums in sympathy.
The car stops along the curb. We’re stopped for a moment as, I assume, Tamary pays the cab fare. I can’t be bothered to care at the moment. When the exchange is done, I hear Tamary’s door open and close. Muffled footsteps wrap around the car, and the door on my side opens. A hand grasps my sleeve and tugs, and I allow myself to be guided from the car. The air outside helps to clear my head, but I still feel unsteady. Tamary pushes the door closed and gives an acknowledging wave to the driver. The car drives off with a cloud of exhaust that sticks to the inside of my lungs when I breathe in.
“Well, then,” says a voice behind and above us.
We turn toward the sound. An honest-to-goodness, horse-drawn carriage is parked behind where the cab had been. Tamary doesn’t seem surprised by this new development, but then I suppose I wouldn’t be either if I hadn’t had my head between my knees when we pulled up.
“Welcome to Scotland,” the driver continues, sitting upon a bench at the head of the carriage. “I’m Hattie. Sophie has told me much about you.” She meets my eyes with particular interest.
She resembles Sophie for the most part—kind face, silvered hair—but she looks much too young, and I can see through the shallow glamour to her real form beneath. Her faery form is different in subtle ways. Sharper bones, angular eyes, the telltale knife-point ears. The two images sit superimposed, like one film negative stacked over another.
The doubling effect makes me dizzy. I sway in place, and Tamary flings out her hands to grab my arm.
“It’s been a rough trip,” she says by way of explanation.
“I can imagine, unfortunately,” Hattie says, voice sympathetic. “You can rest when we reach my home.”
At her wave of invitation, Tamary makes sure I get into the carriage without face-planting and then climbs up herself. The carriage is a welcome change to a plane or car, especially when one of those is followed directly by the other. I can’t detect any iron in the structure, but rather it seems to be crafted from copper and wood. It’s nothing fancy, not like a carriage you would find in Faerie. It’s open mostly, except that it has a roof.
“Are you all right?” Tamary asks quietly. Her gaze is intense at my side.
The nauseating dizziness is starting to subside now that I’m out of the car. I feel hungover more than anything. I lean my head back against the padded headrest.
“Well enough,” I say. “It’s getting better.”
She stares at me for a moment, then nods and leans back, apparently satisfied with my answer.
She and Hattie share a muted conversation. Hattie’s accent is flawlessly Scottish, regardless of her Welsh upbringing. I’m not surprised though. It’s a mark of changelings, and most fey in general, to be able to mimic a region’s dialect. Physical appearance can only blend in so well, after all.
The gentle rocking of the carriage is lulling, so I close my eyes against the headache that threatens to form behind them. I could fall asleep if the ride were longer.
