Emerald City Dreamer (20 page)

Jina. What a wishy-washy hippy, crying over spilt faerie blood, with her rape hotline and feel-good psychobabble. Sandy had nothing wrong with her. What a waste of time.

Sandy briefly considered taking Jina's advice to go out. But how could she relax when there was so much to do? And with all those faeries out there, wandering about freely?

I know what I'll do,
she thought.
I haven't checked the traps in a week.
She grabbed a jacket.

See? I'm not afraid to leave the house.
At the door, she paused to get a pair of thick gloves. No more faerie bites.
Fucking nykk. Fucking nykk and fucking Jina and fucking fuck everybody.

The sun had just set, with the last bit of light peeking out in the western sky. The air still held a bit of winter in the fickle Seattle spring. She didn't notice as she walked. She never did. Instead, she tromped down the sidewalk brooding about all her problems.

While she ranted to herself, her anger built, and it somehow felt better. When she imagined a trap with something inside, she felt less helpless.

According to routine, she went to the Conservatory first. And according to routine, that trap lay unsprung. She considered moving it, but she wasn't sure where, so she left it alone.

On to the one across from the museum. Hollis had reset it after they'd transferred the redcap, so it had all week to catch something new. She carefully lifted the rhododendron branches and grinned from ear to ear. It had sprung. What obnoxious beast did she land this time?

The same stick from last week lay protected from park cleanup under the shrub. She used it to lift up the cage and rest it on the ground. Curiosity got the best of her, so she stared at it and tried to imagine what it contained.
What do I see? What's there?

Nothing.

She tried again.

Come on, bastard. Show yourself!

Still nothing.

"
Fuck you, then!" She kicked the cage, hard, sending it crashing against a tree. "I hope you-"

She saw someone out of the corner of her eye, standing just to her right, fists clenched, leaning forward as if screaming at someone. She turned to look, but no one was there. "What the fuck..."

Her anger transformed into fear. More cautiously, she approached the cage. Something moved on her left, walking beside her, except when she looked, the figure was gone.

She'd read about this. She tried to name it, this creature that could mimic a person. A German faerie, or ghost.

Then the whispers began. She whirled around and around looking for the source, always behind her.

She realized the whispers were in her head. Not that she imagined them - they were indeed very real. No, the whispers were coming from
inside
her head.

She clasped her hands to her ears to force them out.

One whisper became louder than the rest and she could clearly hear what it said:
Let me out.

"
No! Fuck you!"

Let me out.

"
Goddamn you!"

Suddenly her perspective shifted and confusion overwhelmed her with a sickening vertigo. Was she standing beside a rhododendron, or huddled in a cage? The bars burned like liquid nitrogen and threatened to shatter her into a million pieces. She'd been here for days, in this cruel iron torture device
.

Let me out,
it said again, only now she couldn't tell if she was listening or talking. No, she was pretty sure she was the one asking to be let out. She looked up at herself looming over her, bending down to open the cage.

The metal bars sprung open, and she was back standing over an empty cage in a quiet park. Her hair stood on end, and then the chill fled.

The world around her darkened to a pinpoint. She fell to her knees in the dirt, clutching her stomach, gasping for air. Her palms barely caught herself as she fell forward again. The world tilted sideways and the dirt gave her no handhold.

She had swapped places, however briefly, with this faerie. Just like Haun's magic.

Almost like Haun's, yet different. With Haun, she had been inside his mind, heard his thoughts, felt what he felt, wanted what he wanted, but she could still tell who she was.

With this faerie, this time, she
was
it. And it was her.

She held herself for a very long time, until the remaining light from the sun completely vanished and she could finally breathe again. The moon came up and the spring chill had turned icy, like winter in the mountains.

Sandy finally felt like herself. She cautiously picked up the cage with gloved hands and slowly walked home.

Dopple-something. Doppelganger. Double-walker. Norway and Mexico had them too, different names. Fetch. And vardoger or something.

Somewhere, some book would have the answer to what had just happened to her. And she would find it. Tonight.

THE GUITAR CASE SWUNG against Jina's legs as she walked alone to Neumo's, keeping an eye out for Scarf as she went. Aside from the smell of car exhaust, it seemed a nice evening for a stroll, even though she had to glance every which way, looking for a striped scarf or a repeated face. She fully expected him to be at the gig, even if he wasn't following her now.

Back in her wilder days, Jina had dated a few jerks who didn't think she had the right to break up with them. One had made it his business to follow Jina wherever she went. He called obsessively, called her workplace, called Sandy. He showed up at her gigs, invited himself to parties, harassed her friends, sent her gifts.

She didn't miss those days.

On the bright side, that experience helped her know what to look for. She'd been glancing over her shoulder all week, and hadn't seen anyone matching Scarf's description.

Except he was a faerie, and had a few advantages her ex-boyfriend hadn't.

She shifted the weight of the guitar case in her hand.

Sandy's words stung. Jina tried to remember that Sandy was only trying to protect herself. That didn't make it okay, or right, and Sandy should apologize, but Jina didn't expect it from her.

It was getting worse. Jina could deal with the alcoholism. She had most of her life, until she left home. Until she left each dysfunctional partner.

But did she want to just 'deal'?

The constant pressure forced Jina into old mindsets that once protected her from her mother. They also prevented her from leading a sane, happy life. She didn't want to end up walking on eggshells, nagging, obsessing over Sandy's drinking, searching for the hidden bottles to dump.

It had been so tempting to give in. The tears were always the worst. The begging. Sandy was becoming just like her mother.

She'd read someplace that the mind craved the normality of childhood - however chaotic that normal may be. Unconscious actions would constantly attract an abused person to abusive partners. Enablers found addicts. Betrayed souls found liars. Givers found takers. Anything to recreate life just like it was growing up.

Jina had seen these tragic patterns arise in her own life, until she slowly, intentionally, weaned herself from them. It was almost like magic. And knowing what Jina did of magic, maybe it really was.

Perhaps she hadn't come as far as she thought. Perhaps these battles would never be won. Sandy hadn't always been like this, and yet Jina found herself backsliding. If Jina wasn't careful, she'd return to the days when she hopped from thrill to thrill hoping to numb a thousand unresolved pains.

The Ordo needed a sound leader. Until Sandy got control of herself, they would never be ready. She thought about what Trey said. A cult, he'd called it.

Jina had just read up about another cult, these Wanderers of the Way. The Garbage Eaters. People would join, and then disappear from their lives. Drop out of society. Follow the Elders with unquestioning obedience.

The way Sandy clutched at the three of them, looking for company in her self-imposed isolation, seemed a little like that. Not entirely, though maybe it would go there. If Jina was in a cult - no, if she had helped start one - would she even know it?

Either way, this wasn't what she had in mind when they sat around her apartment in Michigan dreaming of a day when they would fight back against Haun and others like him. Jina had imagined a new heroic venture every week, rushing in and rescuing helpless victims from dark places.

Jina could have written a spell last year that would be a siren's call to bring the fae to them, and they could have hacked them to bits with iron swords. But Sandy claimed they were too unprepared, and had vetoed the idea.

Instead, they tilted at windmills and spun their reinvented wheels, running errands and endlessly studying. It was always get more recruits, do more research, make more weapons, get a source of glamour, find a target, find a different target, run more experiments. They could write several books on everything they'd learned about the fae, but they were no closer to making the world safer.

Here she was, alone on the streets, with a fae stalker loose in the city, and the Ordo wasn't doing a damn thing about it. Her anger rose.

Jina looked behind once more. She had limited herself to two backward glances per block. She was already past Dick's Drive-In, over half way to Neumo's.

If Sandy wouldn't help her with this, she would just have to take care of herself. Jina always needed to be there for herself, no matter what. Even if it wasn't fair.

She took deep breaths and focused on finding her center, the peaceful place within. Any problem could be solved more easily from a calm state. Just in case, she kept the new rooting spell at the ready in her mind. She tumbled it over and over like a load of clothes in the dryer.

There was no way he could touch her. If this faerie jerk tried to so much as look at her without consent...

She gripped the handle of her guitar case and walked faster to release some pent-up energy.

That's when she noticed him. Across the street. She hadn't been looking there, she'd been looking ahead and behind. Yet there he was, leaning against a plywood wall surrounding a construction site: a light-haired man in a green quilted jacket with a red and gray striped scarf.

When he noticed her looking at him, he turned away quickly.

Just keep walking...

The sight of him just pissed her off all the more. She could take out this freak.

She kept up her swift pace, visually skimming his side of the street now and then. Sure enough, he followed, a little behind now.

Jina reached into her shirt and pulled out the amulet. It hung there, at the level of her breasts. She took comfort in its weight. But Jina wanted to do more than be protected.

She glanced back, but he was gone. No, still across the street, but far ahead of her.

A clever pattern. He hoped to avoid notice by being in different places. She wondered if that had worked for him before. Maybe it had even worked on her... For how many weeks or even months before this?

She concentrated on seeing his faecast. It was so difficult. His human face distracted her. Just a guy, just a normal guy. The process felt like jumping over a fence, a seven-foot fence made of concrete.

Neumo's was close now, only a few more blocks. She couldn't stand the thought of him down there, amongst her fans, absorbing her toradh for his own vile pleasure. Maybe there were others, people he had already hurt. She hated the idea he might use the energy of her music to hurt someone else.

He lurked directly across from her now, pretending to take a copy of
The Stranger
out of a newspaper stand. Aloud, she sang the tune and the chant that comprised the spell.

His eyes shot up and lingered on her. A smile broke out across his face.

It didn't work... Why...

No glamour, that's why. She couldn't do a thing to him until he used some glamour, until he struck first.

Fuck this bastard. She stormed across the street, not waiting until she reached the crosswalk. A car honked at her and she flipped off the driver.