Faerie Blood (18 page)

I stared at her as she hung up. “He didn’t react at all to my name, did he?” I asked unhappily.

Jude shook her head, brown eyes troubled. “Not a bit,” she said. “Sounded absolutely normal, except for the part where he doesn’t remember you’ve worked for him for the past five years.”

“This can’t be coincidence. Not now, not with—” Dread crackled through me. I fought it down as I started to pace, crossing my arms along my chest and drumming my fingers along each elbow. My fingertips seemed more sensitive than usual. Each little impact set off sparks through my system, which reminded me of the surge of prickling that had hit me out in the kitchen, and stirred it back into life.

Christopher got up and stepped in front of me, gripping my shoulders. The weight and warmth of his hands stopped me in my tracks, but it was the anxiety rising in his face that drew my eyes up to his. “Sounds like a spell,” he said. “Was your boss with you in the bar last night, when the Unseelie sang?”

“Yeah, our whole team was there for our ship party—um, for computer software. Jude and I are testers,” I explained at his baffled look. Then I went cold, thinking of Elessir a’Natharion and his bewitching voice. His song had almost done me in.

Had he hypnotized James with it too? Sanjit? Marshall? Alex?

“You think that singer did something?”

“He’s Unseelie,” answered Christopher. His face turned grim again. “They delight in wreakin’ havoc with mortals.”

Jude protested, “But he was fighting with the others. And he said his, um, Court wanted to talk to Kendis.”

“If he wants somethin’ of you, it’s all the more reason for an Unseelie to twist knots in your mind.” Those words came out of Christopher so dark and cold that I knew I didn’t want to know what could put that kind of tone into his voice.

And yet, I had to. I reached up to lay my hands on his, squeezing his fingers, wanting to chase that shadow off his face—and out of my own thoughts. “That red-headed Seelie wanted something out of me, too,” I said. “And he laid a way bigger whammy on me than Elessir did.”

“Don’t think that doesn’t worry me, either.”

“You know about these things,” I began, and then faltered. Now was the time to ask for his help, but I wouldn’t push him the way Millicent had done. Nor could I begin to think of the right questions to ask to work it all through on my own. So I settled for invoking a promise. “You said at the bar last night that you’d tell me what you could. You still will, won’t you?”

“Millicent will know more,” Christopher said, lowering his eyes. “You’d be best off talkin’ to her.”

He tried to lower his hands too, but I hung onto them and focused on the faint tingling energy between his palms and mine. Its presence steadied me—and pleased me. I trusted it; I trusted Christopher. It made no sense, for I’d known him only a scant few hours longer than I’d known Millie, but I trusted him. “I don’t get this from Millicent,” I replied, bobbing my head down to our hands so he’d know what I meant. “Tell me about it. Tell me about what the Sidhe could have done to James, and if anybody else is in danger! Please. I’m flying blind here, pal.”

‘Please’ had swayed him in the parking lot of the Penguin, and it swayed him again now. Christopher nodded and shakily released my hands, staring down at his fingers as though he’d never seen them before. “I don’t know what’s doin’ it,” he whispered. “The Warders, the Sidhe, we’ve all got magic in us. We can all sense each other…”

“But not like you and I are doing.”

A sparse smile curled his mouth. “Let me put it this way, lass. My granddad used to say there’s a difference between a fish in the water and a fish on the line.”

Jude giggled at that, and my face heated as I glanced at her. “Don’t mind me,” she piped, looking back and forth between Christopher and me. The computer’s screen saver had kicked in just behind her, filling the monitor with a slow cascade of stars. “This is fascinating me mightily even if I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“That makes two of us,” I admitted, grinning at her and Christopher both. To him, I added, “’Cause you know, I’ve never caught a fish.”

“Not to worry.” My grin seemed to hearten him, for his scant smile got a little bigger. “Neither have I…”

All at once he wobbled, and that was my only warning before every nerve ending I possessed fired off at once. My eyes began to burn, and I blinked and scrubbed my knuckles across them, trying to soothe them. I staggered right along with Christopher even as I reached for him, thinking vaguely,
Concussion
.

He grabbed for me at the same time, and Jude grabbed at both of us. “What the hell?” she cried.

“Kendis, are you…” Christopher’s voice thickened. His hands, landing once more on my shoulders, trembled.

“Help me get him sitting down,” I begged Jude. The prickling rush of magic roared across my senses, dizzying me, almost blinding me, but Christopher was the one who was hurt. I held onto my balance long enough to help Jude guide him back to the love seat. The moment he was on it, I collapsed beside him and mumbled, “And I second her question.”

“It’s Millicent,” Christopher mumbled. Whether to Jude, himself, or me I wasn’t sure. “Bolsterin’ the Wards on the house…”

“Ken,” Jude breathed in awe, “right now your eyes are about the bitchingest shade of yellow I’ve ever seen in my life.”

I slammed the eyes in question shut, trying to ride out what had smacked me. But that only sharpened the sensations coursing all over my skin. “Jude, maybe you better go tell her to quit it,” I said. Christopher slumped against me, his head hanging, and the press of his body against me drew stronger sparks towards it, like iron filings to a magnet. Unable to pull myself out of my own slump, I felt my awareness carried off by the flood of energy within him—

No. Not energy, but rather, a path where energy could go. I got a brief confused impression of a strike of lightning pulled down a lightning rod, a single bright flash against the bigger, more powerful storm just outside the house.

“I’ll be okay,” Christopher said weakly. But he couldn’t seem to pull away from me, and I forced myself to lift my head and look at him.

“Her magic’s hurting your head!”

He didn’t deny it, and he still leaned heavily against me, but he began to sit up a little straighter. “I’ll get over it,” he rasped. “Keep talkin’. Keeps me focused.”

Jude, poised to bolt out the door, hesitantly scooted her chair a little closer. “So, uh, hi, Not Feeling a Damned Thing Girl here,” she said, waving a hand at us to get our attention. “How about telling me what’s going on? Ken, you’re really feeling magic?”

“As we speak,” I said, shaking my head, struggling to clear it. I’d slung an arm around Christopher, and I clung to his shoulders as an anchor against the magic drowning my senses. “What’s she doing out there, anyway? How do you bolster a Ward?”

His eyes wild, his features tense, Christopher hauled in a long breath. Then he said, “This is a home; it’s had a family in it…”

“A little one,” I pointed out. “Just Aunt Aggie and me.”

“That still counts. It makes energy you can build into a Ward.” Christopher’s grimace deepened, and his eyes slammed shut as mine had done. “Her blood would add strength to the house Wards too, but I can’t feel it right…” He clapped a hand to his brow, scowling. “Jesus thunderin’ Christ, it’s not supposed to hurt!”

Jude frowned and got to her feet. “I’m going to go tell her to stop—”

“No!” With force enough to drain all the color from his face, Christopher snapped his head up. “She thinks I’m worse than useless as it is!”

“What, you want to prove her right?” I demanded. “You nearly had your skull cracked open, remember? She can leave off working her mojo till it stops giving you migraines!”

I was ready to charge outside, find Millicent, and insist she do just that. How much more Warding could the house need anyway, if she’d been adding to it for twenty-seven years? Despite my own overtaxed senses, I beckoned to Jude and lurched up off the love seat, an effort that made the prickling rushing through me ripple perceptibly. But Christopher snared my hand. When I looked back at him pain still drew his features into taut lines, but his gaze was firm and clear.

“My head’ll keep,” he insisted. “Your aunt won’t, and neither will you.” Those last few words he directed to Jude, who bristled, and he went on, “Sorry, lass, but you won’t.”

Jude’s dark brows drew together in the way that always heralded an impending argument with the developers at work. “Millie made me put that stuff in my eyes—”

“Yeah, she did, and that gave you Sight, but all that means is you’ll see what’s comin’ if one o’ the Sidhe does to you what’s been done to your boss. And until Kendis can defend herself, it can happen to her just as well.”

The very idea of Aggie or Jude struck with the same unnatural memory loss that had afflicted James made my blood go cold. So did the notion of another round of that thrall the red-haired Sidhe had laid upon me. “All right, all right,” I said, “no slacking on the defenses. I get that. But we’d better go tell Millicent and Aggie both about what’s happened to James, at least.”

Christopher sagged back against the love seat, letting go of my fingers and giving me a weary nod. “Yeah, they’d best know.” He rubbed the very top of his head, but peered up at me beneath his hand as he did. “Are you all right, then?”

Was I? I took a quick mental survey, or at least tried to; the attempt to focus made me reel.
Breathe
, I ordered myself, hoping to calm myself down the way I’d done in the kitchen with Millie.
In, out, in, out
.

A few rounds of that helped, and I smiled down at Christopher. “I’ll keep. You just take it easy for a few, okay?”

“If you’ll bring me a bit more Tylenol when you come back,” he said. The love seat was too short to accommodate his rangy frame with any ease, though that didn’t stop him from shifting position and trying to stretch out along it.

“I will,” I promised. I didn’t have the heart to suggest he move to the living room couch—and before I could give in to the urge to sit back down with him, I waved at Jude once more to get her to follow me out into the hall. “C’mon.”

As Jude and I headed out of the den the rush from Millicent’s Warding work subsided almost as suddenly as it had arisen, fading down to a barely noticeable vibration in the air. Just enough of it remained to tug me towards the kitchen. There we found my aunt loading up the dishwasher, and she looked up with a grateful smile as Jude stepped up to give her a hand with the dishes. Millie in the meantime was coming in through the sliding glass door that looked out on Aggie’s backyard, her hat on her head and a “mission accomplished” sort of look written across her face.

Which was all well and good, but I had a mission of my own.

“Whatever you were doing out there gave Christopher a hell of a headache,” I announced the moment she was in earshot. “Is this going to keep happening to him every time somebody makes magic go around him?”

Pulling the patio door closed behind her, Millicent said with a sharp little humph, “Probably. Boy’s got a power link open to the city, but it ain’t stable, and that troll clobbering him can’t have helped.”

“So how do we make it stable?”

“We don’t.” The old Warder stumped over to fetch her gun and the blanket in which she’d wrapped it out of the hallway closet, but as she passed me she gave me a stern, uncompromising look. “It’s his power, girlie, not yours or mine. He’s the one that has to settle up with Seattle to Ward it proper, and he can’t do it until he’s ready.”

I blinked, and then reluctantly bobbed my head. In other words, no pushing Christopher—a decision I’d already made anyway. “Okay. You also should know something’s happened to my boss; I called in and found out he doesn’t remember who I am.”

Aggie froze in the middle of closing the dishwasher. “The same thing that happened to Will,” she breathed. Next to her, Jude shifted uneasily from foot to foot, looking like she wondered whether our boss’s sudden, bizarrely specific amnesia was catching.

Her expression turning thunderous, Millicent let out a blistering oath and smacked a palm against the nearest wall. “It’s another goddamned Pact violation, is what it is,” she growled. Then she whirled back to me. “And all the more reason for you to stay in this house till I get back from walking the Wards. If the Sidhe we’re after are willing to cut you off from your mortal connections like this—”

“But why?” I cried. “If it’s me they want, why would they mess around with people close to me?”

Millie sighed, pushed her hat back upon her head, and clapped a hand onto my shoulder. “It makes you vulnerable, honey. Easier to corner you into whatever they want you for. And until we know what they want and get you able to protect yourself, it’d be stupid to give them a shot at you. Or Aggie. Or Jude.”

The dread lurking in the bottom of my mind roiled, promising to spike back up if I didn’t keep it in check. I pulled it off, but not completely; a nervous little quaver escaped into my voice. “T-then maybe you shouldn’t go. If it’s that serious, you should stay—help us figure out what to do next!”

“And how to help James,” Jude added, to which I vehemently nodded.

“Honey, I need to watch over all of Seattle, not just you,” Millie said. “And I can’t afford to slack off even one day. Best thing I can do for your boss is to find out who our Seelie troublemakers are and get ’em the hell out of my city. I’ve got a couple of contacts in Magnolia and Ballard. I’m going to head that way, find ’em, and see if they can tell me anything, and do the Wards in that part of the city at the same time.”

Short of telling the magical protector of the city how to do a job I barely understood, I saw no option before me but following her orders. I didn’t like it one bit—but what else could I do? I heaved a sigh of resignation and said, “What should we do while you’re gone? You said something about people we could email?”

To that, the old Warder produced a scribbled note from one of her pockets. “Here are the addresses. They’re Warders, like me. Email ’em, say I sent you, and ask ’em what we need to know.”