Grave Dance (9 page)

Desmond continued to stare over the table at me for several seconds before he sat back on his haunches and laid his head in Rianna’s lap again.

“So if you aren’t hurt, whose blood is this?” I asked as I lifted my purse with one finger. Thankful y the tissue I’d used earlier was stil on top of the purse’s contents and I didn’t have to root around and risk getting the blood al over everything.

“How familiar are you with fae inheritance?”

I frowned at her.
Well, that definitely doesn’t answer my
question.
“Not at al . Now about the bloo—”

“I was afraid of that.” She leaned forward and plucked the tissue from my hands. “That won’t help.”

I glared, though she was right. I’d rubbed at the blood, but I glared, though she was right. I’d rubbed at the blood, but it stil coated my palms and fingers, as if I’d dipped my hand in paint.

“Now, about fae inheritance,” she said without pause.

“The fae are not truly immortal, just unaging. Death for humans is expected, anticipated, and in some ways prepared for. Death among fae is always a shock. They do not prepare for it, and as a culture have few precedents for it. Property and titles are not passed down along family lines because such things are assumed to be owned forever unless traded, gifted, or lost in duels. There are dozens of faerie princes and princesses, but none wil rule a court unless they duel or kil for it.”

“Okay. Why the culture lesson, and what does it have to do with this?” I lifted my hands.

She motioned me to be patient and continued. “Most duels are held under court supervision. Rules are established before the duel begins, but if it is a duel to the death, the winner takes al : property, titles, possessions, whatever the loser claimed as his own. When a fae is kil ed outside of a duel, it is less clear what happens to his property. But Faerie, wel , sometimes Faerie has its own idea.”

The sick feeling in my stomach told me I knew where this conversation was going. “Coleman?”

Rianna nodded. “You kil ed Coleman outside a duel, but because of the magic of that night, we were technical y in Faerie. The courts tried to claim Coleman’s property, but thus far, al claims have failed.” She took a deep breath and looked at my hands again. “I wasn’t sure, with how things played out that night, if you would be credited with his death

—I mean, the Winter Queen’s knight shot and kil ed the body Coleman inhabited. But you, wel . . . you have Coleman’s blood on your hands, so I think Faerie transferred his property to you.”

A sour taste crawled up my throat, and I swal owed, trying to rid the taste from my suddenly dry mouth. “His blood?” I to rid the taste from my suddenly dry mouth. “His blood?” I stared at the red, tacky liquid and then scrubbed my palms on the thighs of my pants, desperate to wipe them clean.

It didn’t work.

“Here.” Rianna dropped something in the center of the table between us.

I tore my gaze from my palms, hoping she’d had baby wipes or hand sanitizer on her. No, she’d dropped a pair of white gloves on the table.

“I’m just supposed to cover it up?”

Rianna shrugged. “Fae blood can’t be washed away.”

I stared at the gloves and my throat constricted. I had blood on my hands. My eyes burned, my vision clouding over as moisture gathered. I blinked it back. I was angry, and freaked, but I wasn’t going to tear up. I wasn’t.
I have a
man’s blood on my hands.
But he’d been a monster. If I hadn’t stopped him, others would have died.

I took a deep breath. Then another. It took three deep breaths to ease the tightness in my chest enough that I could speak again. I picked up the gloves, sliding them on with slow, careful movements to keep from jerking them on frantical y. Then I looked at Rianna.

“It’s been a month. Why did the blood appear now?”

“I’d guess because this is the first time you’ve come to Faerie since the Blood Moon.” There was no accusation in her words, but I stil felt the sting and cringed anyway. One of the few things she’d had time to say to me that night was to ask me to come here, to the Bloom, to see her. I hadn’t.

She wrapped her fingers around her wooden mug and stared at its contents, not meeting my eyes. “Faerie tends to take things more literal y than the mortal realm does.

When you’re not here, you probably won’t be able to see the blood.”

But it would stil stain my soul—not that I hadn’t already felt it there.

“You talk about Faerie like it’s sentient. It’s a place.” The fabric of her dress rustled as she shrugged. “Faerie is . . . It fabric of her dress rustled as she shrugged. “Faerie is . . . It just is. I wouldn’t say the land is exactly a
being
, but it is certainly ful of very old magic, which appears to have grown
aware
, for lack of a better word.”

“And you think the land decided I should inherit Coleman’s property?”

We both looked at my now covered hands. Then she pressed her lips together and nodded. “Like I said, the courts tried to claim it, but al of his former holdings moved to a type of no-man’s-land, outside any of the courts’

control. They are incensed, to say the least, particularly the Winter Queen, as she thought her knight had claimed it for her. You should come to Faerie and see if the holding responds to you.”

Mention of the “queen’s knight” again—Falin. I made it a point not to think about him, or about the fact that he’d never cal ed or made any attempt to contact me after the Coleman case. But being back in the Bloom, remembering what had happened here—or more accurately, what had happened after we’d left the Bloom, made heat lift in my cheeks and the ache fresh again. I dropped my elbows on the table and pressed the palms of my hands against my eyes. “I think I need a drink.”

“Have you tried that before?”

I looked up. “What?”

“I have heard rumors. Most are not convinced you are fae enough to hold land in Faerie, but the blood . . . If you’ve eaten faerie food before and left Faerie unscathed, that perhaps proves you are fae enough.”

“Oh.” I shook my head. Everyone knew better than to eat faerie food. One bite of food or sip of wine would addict a mortal for life—she would never be able to eat anything else, as regular food would turn to ash on her tongue. Even if someone had the wil power to leave Faerie, she would eventual y starve to death. There were talks about importing regulated faerie food for those who accidental y became addicted, but making fae food available outside Faerie addicted, but making fae food available outside Faerie increased the risk that mortals would come in contact with it. Currently there were very few cases of addiction, but it was also very difficult for mortals to get into Faerie, so the chance for accidental exposure was minimal.

I was half fae. Did that give me a fifty-fifty chance of being addicted? I glanced at Rianna’s mug.

Her thin fingers wound around the mug, dragging it closer to her side of the table. I didn’t think she was aware of the motion.
She believes I can claim land in Faerie but is
unconvinced I can eat their food?
I felt a smile crawl over my face, but I knew it wasn’t a happy one. I wasn’t about to take the chance of getting addicted anyway.

“Wil you come to Faerie?” she asked. “See if the land responds to you? If it does, you can align to a court so the holdings move there.”

“Whoa, slow down.” I threw up my hands. “I don’t want to claim Coleman’s holdings. They can rot for al I care. And I’m certainly not going to align myself with a court.”

Rianna’s frown stretched across her face, and if possible, her shoulders slumped further. “Al,” she said, her voice just above a whisper, “I’m
part
of Coleman’s property.”

Chapter 8

I
blinked at my former best friend and roommate. “I thought you were freed when Coleman died.” I’d seen the silver chain dissolve from her throat.

“From his compulsion, yes. But from Faerie?” She shook her head. “I’m a changeling. Four years passed for you, but I have lived in Faerie hundreds of years, danced with the fae, eaten their food and drunk their wine. I’m not mortal anymore, not truly. Like them, I’l never age, never die, but only while I’m inside Faerie.”

“You can’t ever leave?”

She shrugged. “I can take short trips as long as I’m careful. If I leave, the magic of Faerie wil protect me except for the moments surrounding dawn and sunset. Those are the moments
between
, when the world is changing, and al but the strongest Fae magic fails. If I were caught outside of Faerie in the moments when magic fails, al the years I’ve seen would catch up with me and I would turn to dust.” She shuddered and Desmond nudged her stomach with his muzzle. Her hand dropped to him and clutched the thick fur at his nape. “But back on topic. A changeling can’t own anything or align with a court. If I had just wandered into Faerie, I could be claimed by any court, but since I belonged to Coleman, I now belong to his heir. While possession of his property is in question, I am untouchable

—theoretical y—-but there is no one to enforce that status, and no court wil help me.”

“So you want me to come to Faerie and
claim
you?” The words tasted bad in my mouth. “That’s crazy. You’re a words tasted bad in my mouth. “That’s crazy. You’re a person. You’re my friend.”

She crossed her arms over her chest. “I’m a changeling.

And I’m in trouble.”

“I—” My protest died in my throat when Desmond’s head snapped up. He lunged to his feet, his lips curling away from his rust-colored teeth as he stalked around the table.

I whirled around, my hand moving toward the dagger hidden in my boot even as I turned.
Me, paranoid?

Probably.

A woman who
looked
human, though she may have been glamoured, stopped three tables away. Her eyes widened as Desmond planted himself in her path, and her hand froze in front of her body, as if caught in a motion between reaching and blocking. Then, shocking the hel out of me, she dropped into a curtsy.

“I mean no harm, sir barghest,” she said without rising.

Desmond went silent.
So the overgrown dog likes ladies
who curtsy.
But even though his growling stopped, he didn’t move from the woman’s path.

“Is there something we can help you with?” Rianna asked, her hands disappearing in her sleeves as she spoke. When they emerged, I caught the glint of metal. A dagger, maybe? Clearly I wasn’t the only paranoid one. Of course, it’s not exactly paranoia when the monsters real y are chasing you.

The woman straightened from her curtsy. She looked about ten years older than me, with wide, blunt features that made me suspect she was a changeling, not a fae. It wasn’t that she was unattractive, just more handsome than pretty.

She smiled, her wide mouth softening her face with the expression. “Actual y . . .” Her focus moved to me. “I think you already have. You’re Alex Craft, aren’t you?”

In my experience, it was rarely good when people I didn’t know recognized me. Stil , it wasn’t like I could deny I was me. I nodded.

“Oh, I thought you were.” She pressed her palms

“Oh, I thought you were.” She pressed her palms together, her smile spreading. “I saw you on television and was sure I recognized you. You were the one who stopped the eternal dance. I know you were.”

Crap.
Being recognized as someone who had caused trouble in the Bloom probably wasn’t a good—or safe—

thing. The woman’s excitement grew when I didn’t dispute the claim.

She rushed forward, sidestepping Desmond. The barghest growled again, but the woman had already reached our table. She threw her arms around me, and if she’d had a weapon, I would have been dead. Instead I found myself in an emphatic embrace.

“Uh.”

“Thank you,” she said. The top of her head ended at my shoulders and her cheek felt blistering hot where it pressed against my bare arm. “I was caught in that dance for six hundred years. You freed me.”

At her words, a balance between us shifted and whether she realized it or not, the debt she owed me became a very real obligation. I ignored the feeling. I wasn’t about to start col ecting favors from strangers. I patted her back awkwardly.

“Don’t mention it.”
Really. As in please be quiet.
I glanced over her head. Several patrons had turned our way, listening.

I extracted myself from the woman’s hug gently, trying not to be rude but anxious to reclaim my personal space. She released me, but she didn’t back off.

“I’m Edana. I didn’t mean to interrupt your conversation.”

She nodded an apology to Rianna. “But I had to thank you when I recognized you. I can’t believe you managed to free everyone from the dance. And you talk to the dead as wel , don’t you? The newscast I saw featured you with a ghost. It looked like you were holding hands, but I didn’t think the living could interact with ghosts and shades. How did you pul that off?”

pul that off?”

“I . . .” I didn’t have a good answer for that, especial y since most grave witches couldn’t. Of course, if she’d been in that circle for six hundred years, I had no idea how much she knew about the changes since the Magical Awakening.

“I have an affinity for the dead.”

“But—” she started, but was interrupted as two men approached the table. Wel , two male fae.

Whereas Edana appeared human, the two newcomers were undeniably fae. The first had skin the texture of bark and wore a twisting vine of mistletoe in place of clothing.

The second stood only three feet from the ground. He had eight spindly legs but a surprisingly humanoid head on the top of his insectlike thorax. Behind him, I caught sight of a curved stinger as long as my forearm on the end of a thick scorpionlike tail.

Desmond’s growl rol ed soft but menacing across the table. He’d planted himself between the fae and Rianna. I was apparently on my own.

“You are the one who s-stopped the endless-s dance?”

the scorpion fae asked.

I gulped. The two fae weren’t the only ones waiting for my answer. Conversation had al but ceased in the bar.
Why
do I get a feeling not everyone is going to want a
membership to my fan club?

“There were extenuating circumstances,” I muttered, dropping eye contact.

“You shouldn’t interfere with situations that don’t concern you,” the mistletoe-clad fae said, stepping forward and making my gaze snap up to him. “Many of the dancers were imprisoned in that circle for a reason.”

But not all.
I knew for a fact that some were tricked into joining the festivities and some simply stumbled in by mistake. Not that I was going to say any of that. Arguing with the two fae wouldn’t win me any points and I wasn’t about to apologize and indebt myself to anyone if I didn’t have to, so I remained silent.

have to, so I remained silent.

My heart crashed in my chest, each beat harder than the last as the silence dragged on, but slowly the sound of murmured conversation picked up around us again. The two fae stared at me a moment longer, and then without another word they turned and walked away. The mistletoe-clad fae sat at a table with two thorn fae, and the scorpion fae joined a cluster of goblins gambling on a dice game in the back corner.
They just wanted to issue a warning?

I sank into my chair, relief making my hands shake enough that I shoved them in my lap. Edana had slipped away at some point during the conflict, so it was once again just Rianna and me at the table. Wel , and Desmond. Not that I had any delusions of privacy—there were definitely ears turned toward our corner.

“So . . .” I said, tugging on the cuff of my glove. I wished I had something in front of me—food, pen and paper, anything at al —to focus on. But I didn’t. I just had Rianna sitting across from me, watching me fidget.

“You’re not going to come to Faerie, are you?” She phrased it as a question, but her voice betrayed her lack of hope.

I cringed. I’d had enough of Faerie for one day. Besides, I couldn’t claim ownership of Rianna. “You’re my friend. I can’t claim you as property. It’s weird and wrong.”

“So you’d rather someone else who is not my friend and who may see me only as a tool, take over?”

Okay, when she put it that way, it was the lesser of two evils, but . . . I released a deep breath, letting the air drag out of me and take with it the panic fluttering in my stomach.

But nothing.
I couldn’t let someone else, someone who wouldn’t have Rianna’s best interests in mind, walk in and make her a slave again. The least I could do was see if Faerie recognized me as the heir to Coleman’s holdings. If it did, I could try to figure out a way to free Rianna.

“What do I have to do?”

“Thank goodness.” She pushed away from the table.

“Thank goodness.” She pushed away from the table.

“Now, we go deeper into Faerie.”

And somehow I’d gotten talked into going to the one place that scared me the most.

Rianna led me through the club, toward the large tree growing right through the floorboards of the bar. Over our heads, a swol en moon glimmered high above the tree limbs. I frowned at it. The ful moon had passed almost a week ago on the mortal plane. The ful moon here was not a reassuring indication of time.

“How do we get there?” I asked, lagging slightly behind.

Desmond had glued himself to Rianna’s side, and there wasn’t room for al three of us to walk abreast between the crowded tables.

“We’l have to pass through the winter court,” Rianna said without turning around. “Then we’l take another door to Stasis—that’s the no-man’s-land where the holdings are currently located.”

She stopped as she reached the tree and turned back to me. Motioning me closer, she raised on her tiptoes and whispered, “I wouldn’t mention where we are going.

Coleman’s holdings are nothing magnificent, and surely nothing to fight over, but the Winter Queen was miffed to say the least when Faerie didn’t award it to her court. In her opinion, her knight is responsible for Coleman’s death, even if he employed the help of a feykin. She doesn’t take rejection wel and she isn’t the most pleasant person when displeased.”

“I take it the winter court wouldn’t be one to align with then?”

Rianna lifted one thin shoulder and let it drop. “I know you have . . . interests . . . in the winter court—which, by the way, I also recommend that you not mention. The queen is infamous for her jealousy. But any court you decided to join would be better than staying in Stasis, cut off from would be better than staying in Stasis, cut off from everyone.”

Interests
. I almost laughed.
That’s one way to say I slept
with the queen’s pet assassin and lover.
Of course, I hadn’t known he was either at the time. I shook my head. “You know that even if Faerie recognizes me as inheriting, I’m not going to automatical y join a court. I don’t know anything about the courts.”

“I know. But at least if the holding is claimed, that wil be taken care of.” She gave me a weak smile. “Desmond and I can wait it out as long as we know we’re not going to be tossed and traded around.”

“Am I inheriting the dog as wel ?”

The dog in question rol ed back his lips, showing fangs, and Rianna winced. “Not exactly. I’l explain later. Are you ready?”

Well, I guess this is it.
I nodded and fol owed her as she walked around the back of the tree. I expected a trapdoor in the ground, or maybe in the tree itself—after al , folklore reported Faerie to be a subterranean land, and I’d heard Caleb say before that he was headed “under hil ,” but there was no door—there was just tree and the back side of the bar.

“Rianna, wha—”

“Keep walking.”

I took another two steps around the tree, and the world seemed to slide around me. I wasn’t moving, or at least it didn’t feel like I moved in space, but the warm amber light in the bar smeared into darkness, and a cooler, bluer light fil ed the air.

I looked around: the bar was gone, the tree was gone, and I stood next to a giant pil ar carved from shimmering glass. No, not glass. Ice.

The air had a bite to it, but it wasn’t cold, and surely not frigid enough for the enormous pil ar beside me, but though the ice shimmered, the intricately carved fae dancing in spirals up the pil ar were sharp, the details too precise for spirals up the pil ar were sharp, the details too precise for the pil ar to be melting. My eyes fol owed the dancing fae up the column until it disappeared into a glassy ceiling that sparkled like hundreds of smal stars were caught in the frozen mass. Music emanated from somewhere, the soft, plucked notes mournful.

“This is Faerie?” I asked.
Where are the fae?
There was no one here, unless the carved ice sculptures lining the wal s were alive. Which was possible.

“This is a hal way. Little more.” Rianna crooked her arm through mine. “We shouldn’t tarry.”

She set a brisk pace, al but dragging me down the long passageway. I expected the smooth ice floor beneath us to be slick, but it was no worse than walking on marble. The only light in the passage was from the stars caught in the ice overhead, but it provided more than enough il umination, even for my bad eyes. I reached out with my ability to sense magic. The very air buzzed with enchantments and magic. It was as if I were drinking the magic of Faerie in with every deep breath. I tightened my shields before the buzz of magic overwhelmed my senses.

We’d made it only a couple of yards when three figures stepped out in front of us. At first I thought the statues real y had come to life, but these were fae of flesh and blood. Not that we could see a lot of that flesh. Al three wore hooded cloaks as white as freshly fal en snow, and in the gap where the cloaks fel open I could see intricate armor that looked like plated scales carved from blue-tinted ice. Two blocked our path while a third moved to intercept us, a sword naked in his hand.