Dance By Midnight (10 page)

"But why?"

"Why? Because in the outer worlds, you can't feel." She frowned up at me. "Didn't you know this? There is no real physical anything. Emotions are little more than balls tossed about to pass the time. Sensations are merely echoes. But the legends of the things experienced in our world, the material one, are a mighty force, Darren. They're a treasure any planar creature desires," she smiled. "And so far, the only Planars who've successfully integrated themselves into our world are the Revenants. But even they have to give up so much of their own power to do this. And giving up power is not something any creature from Alfheim is willing to do."

She reached out and touched my arm. It looked like her fingers were moving over my skin, but I felt the pads of a large wolf instead. "This.
Touch
. A simple sensation. And taste. Oh how extraordinary things taste in this world of existence."

"Are you saying there's no sensation associated with touch where she's from? That doesn't make sense. How can there be no sensation? I mean…if Maab tortures people, don't they feel it?"

"It's hard to explain if you've never been there, or experienced the difference. But to do that you'd have to become half Faerie like me and that's not a curse I'd wish on my worst enemy. Just try and understand that to be here, to be physical, is one of her strongest fantasies." Grey dipped her head. "And the mantle."

"So she's taken all of you to build a Cairn, and all of you have refused?"

"Yes. But she hasn't given up on Brendi, yet, even though she's refused twice. On the third refusal Maab will change Brendi as well and make her one of us."

I rubbed at my chin.

"Dags?"

"Coming! I need pants!" I hollered back and looked at Grey. "So mantle exists? You mentioned it earlier."

"Yes. And it
is
one of the things the queen wants. Possibly even more than walking here without turning to ash."

"Why's the mantle so important?"

"Oh Darren…have you never been in love?"

Now that was a loaded question. I stared at her but didn't see her as my memories drifted to the last conversation I'd had with Nona. She'd told me I'd loved her daughter Zoë. And then it had been taken away from me…but not from her. "I did…once. But I don't remember it. It's one of the curses I carry for now. She's moved on, and so have I."

"Then I fear for your sanity if that memory ever returns and you realize you've lost her. Love…makes you do really strange things. Maab loved Oberon above everyone else. When the veil disappeared just after he pledged his love for Titania—Maab accused Oberon of taking it back and cursed him."

"She cursed the king of the Faeries?"

"Oh yes. She's more powerful than Oberon. She turned him into a donkey. And he was stuck that way for over a century, until Titania found the spell to weave him out of it. But he still has some seriously big ears to this day because of it."

I couldn't stop myself from laughing. She laughed as well, and I thought I heard a wolf chuff. We both turned at the sound of someone coming up the stairs and I managed to duck into my closet when the door burst open.

"Dags!" It was Sam.

"Hey, I'm naked!" I grabbed the door of the closet and closed it. My towel fell.

"It's not like I haven't seen it all already, Dags. I took care of you when I first met you."

Oh.

Now that's embarrassing.

"Why's Grey on your bed?"

"We were talking."

"Funny. I'm taking her out for a walk. Be downstairs when I get back."

I listened for the door to shut and then stepped out. I grabbed a pair of clean jeans, another t-shirt and underwear. The socks came on last and I sat on the bed to pull them up. Everything Grey told me
felt
right. It had this unexplainable ding of truth. Truth as far as she knew the truth to be.

Grey was Sam's mother. I didn't know a thing about her mother. I really didn't know a damn thing about Sam.

And I was pretty sure her mom's name wasn't Grey.

With a last look around the room and a double look at my chest and neck in the mirror over the dresser, I jogged down the steps and into the living room.

The place looked…well…witchy was the best word I could come up with. The coffee table became an altar, and on it she'd placed a silver bowl of sand, a red candle, two white candles, a pinecone and a pair of deer antlers. The whole set up looked a little…primitive.

Mike joined me, a beer in his hand. He nodded to the table. "She told me what each represents, but I don't get it. I figured we'd burn a little incense, light a fire, and chant."

I gave him a sad face. "You watch way too many movies. I can take a guess at each object's meaning, but every practitioner is different. I can't say what's right and what's wrong."

"You talk like you've had some experience at this."

"I have."

He leaned back and looked at me. "When you get your memory back, you're going to have to tell me everything that happened to you. 'Cause it sounds like it was fucked up."

"Deal." I shoved my hands into my pockets. I wanted a beer but figured it was better to keep my head as clear as I could. "So… how much do you know about Sam?"

"Uhm…not a lot. We've sort of gotten to know about each other since we started working together."

"How did that happen?"

"She answered an ad I put in the local psychic rag in Atlanta right before I headed down here. She called about a minute later and got in the car that night. When she showed up she said she'd added a wolf-dog and that was that. She's found out more about Brendi's disappearance than anyone else."

"True…but has she ever talked about herself? Like her family?"

"Not really. What little she has shared was just…she's an only child. Mother ran off when she was six and her dad tried to raise her. But he died about ten years after that and when she turned seventeen she struck out on her own. Her dad's buried here in Bonaventure."

That surprised me. "Really?"

"Yeah, her family owns a plot here. Have her show it to you when we can."

I didn't really know much about Bonaventure except that it was old. And I figured there wasn't really a lot of room for more plots to be sold, so most of the new internments were like today's. New bodies in old crypts. I was going to ask him if her family had a mausoleum or a regular plot when the door opened and she and Grey came in.

The wolf made herself comfortable on the sofa and Sam came to us. "Let's get this shit started." Sam pulled the baggie out of her back pocket and placed it on the coffee table. When she went down on her knees so did Mike and I. Mike on her left and I on her right. I watched her light the altar, seeing a pattern in her movements, as well as seeing the astral and mental lights she bent into will.

Once the incense was fired up she took the piece of dress she'd cut out of the baggie and motioned for me to grab the book. I took it off the kitchen table and placed it on the coffee table in front of her. After transcribing it, she'd actually added it to the BBOE like everyone before her. Sam had mad drawing skills and great penmanship.

After she recited the spell in translated English she dropped the piece of cloth on the lit briquette. It ignited almost immediately and sent a burst of purple and white smoke into the air.

The answer was in the smoke and I saw it a second before Sam pointed it out.

She and I both stared at each other when we recognized what and where the mantle was.

Mike didn't see the image in the smoke and looked at each of us. "What? Where is it? Please don't tell me in Alaska. I can afford Portland maybe, but I can't fly to Alaska to get it."

"No, it's not in Alaska." Sam waved at the smoke, which had now filled the townhouse. I got up and went to the front window. It lifted easily and the smoke instantly darted out the opening.

"Where?"

"It's here in Savannah," I said as I grabbed a magazine and fanned the smoke in the direction of the window.

"It is? Well that's a stroke of luck." He paused. "So why do you two look like that?"

"Well," Sam said as she sat back on the floor. "It's more of
where
it is that has me puzzled."

"Oh?"

"Tell him, Sam," I said as I rejoined them at the coffee table.

She looked at Mike. "You know that sash Thomas has tied around his top hat?"

Mike nodded, then his eyes widened. "No…"

"Yes," Sam and I said together.

"Thomas Rhymer has Maab's mantle."

"'Fraid so. Which means," she said as she looked at me. "We gotta come up with a good thing to trade with him."

Grey yawned on the sofa and smacked her tail on the cushions.

"You don't think he'll give it to us?"

"Dags…what do you know about Thomas the Rhymer?"

"Just what's in the old story about him." I leaned back against the sofa and Grey put a paw on my shoulder. "I know he stumbled or was taken into Fairyland and the Queen, which I assume was Titania, allowed him to stay there for a little while. And when she helped him back home, seven years had passed."

"That's the generic version." Sam picked up the candlesnuffer and put out the flames in the reverse order she lit them. "It's true up to a point, but at the time he arrived, Maab was Oberon's love, and when he was finally released it was because of Titania's kindness. I've never gotten the whole story from Thomas or his version. But if he's kept that veil that close to him over the centuries then I'd be more than a little sure it means something to him."

"I would too," Mike said. "And what if he won't give it to us?"

"Then we're back to square one and running out of options."

THE GRiMOiRE

Heading down to River Street at two in the morning seemed crazy to me. But Sam and Mike wanted to tackle getting the mantle from Thomas as soon as possible. Once we had it in our hands—then the fun would begin. I wasn't really looking forward to confronting a Faerie Queen. My vote was sleep,
then
we go after her in daylight.

I lost.

Finding Thomas wasn't that hard. He was the only carriage still trolling Bay Street at that hour. He was traveling west when we waved at him from across the street. He waved back, big smiles, turned and pointed to the River Street side and pointed down. I discovered what he pointed to was a scary-as-fuck flight of stairs to River Street and one of the cobblestone driveways that gave access to cars and idiots willing to mutilate their alignment driving on rocks.

Thomas brought his carriage down to meet us and I realized he was the only horse and buggy driver I'd seen do this as long as I'd been in Savannah. Given the whole alignment issue, I wondered if the cobblestone messed with his carriage. I mean, weren't horse and buggies
the
means of transportation when cobblestones covered all the city roads?

Once at the bottom of the stairs I gave the area a cursory look and realized we were exactly where I'd escaped the Cairn. The thought made me shake and I moved as far away from the retaining wall as I could.

"Ah…I see you remember, Guardian." Thomas jumped off the carriage and landed gracefully beside it. On the outside he appeared to be a man in his fifties, but on the inside, if this really was
the
Thomas the Rhymer, he was far older than that. "Samantha." He offered his hands to her as he kissed each of her cheeks. Then he offered a hand to Mike. The two shook hands and then embraced. Last he leaned down to offer a hand to Grey. "Ah, Mistress Grey. I see you're looking more lovely than ever."

The wolf offered him her paw and he kissed it. To anyone else that would look really weird. But I assumed he knew the wolf's true form. Thomas straightened and looked at me. "Your colors have shifted, Guardian. You've taped magic."

I nodded but didn't make any attempt to move closer. Thomas represented a recent traumatic experience and the thought of getting too close to him terrified me.

He looked at everyone. "What brings you down this way so late into the dark time?"

Dark time. Was that something I needed to know about?

"He means after midnight." Sam filled in the blank as she hooked her thumbs into her jeans. "Thomas, we have a problem." She gave him the short version of what'd happened with the Fae in the cemetery and the ritual we'd performed in the townhouse. Apparently he already knew about Mike's daughter. When she finished they eyed one another. "I'm guessing…you know what the smoke revealed to us?"

The carriage driver didn't look the least bit surprised. "Yes. I possess the Queen's Mantle. But I will tell you now, I will not give it up."

Mike stepped toward him. "This is to save my daughter—"

Thomas held up a hand. "I understand that. And having been a prisoner as well as a guest in Alfheim, I can attest to her plight." He glanced at Grey. I noticed it. Did they? "But the mantle holds a very special place for me."

"You stole it."

"No."

Mike and Sam glanced at one another. "But you have it," Sam ventured.

"The veil is not something Maab should possess," he said as his expression darkened.

"The information we gleaned said the mantle was a token from Oberon to Maab. Then it was stolen just as he pledged his love to Titania."