Trueheart (Portland After Dark Book 1) (16 page)

She put the toast in front of him and passed him the jam. "Tell me about your Queen, then. Start there."

His cheekbones flared bright red as he spooned large dollops of jam on the toast and spread it thickly. "She's...she's beautiful. Terrible. Fascinating. Horrible. Wonderful. Murderous. She was long ago one of the Tylwyth Teg, a bright spirit, but something changed and she became a solitary fae, and then Queen of the Unseelie court. She took it away from him who was king before her and moved her court from Britain to Portland."

"They crossed the ocean? Those creatures?"

"She enslaved the kelpies. They brought the court over the seas upon their backs with the mer-folk and selkies. She's unimaginably powerful."

"Kelpies."

"Like that young man—you remember, the one who said his claim upon you was prior to mine. Selkies are sea-creatures—gentler than kelpies."

Tess froze in mid-sip, remembering the fearsome angular grace and foulness of the young man who had sought to take her seeing stone from her the night before. Her finger went to the spot on her throat, hardly more than a scratch this morning, where Thomas had drawn her blood.

His eyes met hers and held them. "You believe me when I say you must never be alone with him or any of his kind again, don't you? They are seducers, but what they kiss, they devour. Some of the young women found drowned in the Willamette are their victims. Your police don't mention how the girls are missing their livers when the bodies come ashore, or how sometimes—"

Tess let out a cry and shot up from the table. "But fairies are beautiful, tiny, magical things...
imaginary
things..."

"Not these." When Thomas took a toothy bite of the toast, spread with the fleshy, blood-red bits of strawberries, Tess felt her gorge rising and hurried to lean over the sink, afraid her breakfast would make a reappearance.

After a moment her stomach calmed and she turned, clutching the edge of the sink. "How will I know them? They look like people! I can't go around staring at everybody through a rock and screaming when one of them turns out to be a waterlogged pony! I'll be locked up as a danger to myself and others!"

"They always give themselves away. For one thing, they're always male. Look for water—tears in the eyes, a damp spot on his shirt, sweat standing on his skin even on a cool day. The smell of waterweed. The way they won't let you look away from their eyes. The way they always want you to walk away with them to someplace less crowded."

She couldn't control the quiver in her voice. "You do the same things. Sometimes when you talk, I can hardly look away. You're always wanting me to go with you, and I do..."

Thomas raked his hands through his hair. "And I haven't even sniffed at your liver, have I? Come on. I'm a trow, not a kelpie."

"What does that mean? What, really? You'll eat me
next
week instead of right now? God, listen to me. I hardly know what I'm saying."

He sighed heavily and put his palms flat on the table, long fingers spread apart. "I won't eat you at all. Look. I'm half human. The Queen met me years ago, and I became her lover, and she...changed me. Began to make me one of the fae. I've fought it ever since, but it's hard and getting harder, and there may come a time when I can't be human any longer. I want out, but I don't know how to
get
out. All I know is when I'm with you, I'm more human than I've been for years, and I'm holding onto that as hard as I can."

His hands turned palm-up of their own accord, and on the raw pink skin she saw the clear impressions of the rows of rusty bolts and rivets of the Burnside Bridge girders, scalded there like cattle brands. "Will you help me? I shouldn't ask you, but I—"

"Oh, your poor hands." The words came out in a rush as she crossed the kitchen and reached for his right hand, then pulled back, afraid she would hurt him. Half-remembered stories from childhood began to surface. The fairies didn't like iron, or horseshoes, or inside-out clothing. Couldn't cross running water. Had to be gone by cockcrow. Kept pots of gold at the feet of rainbows. Made shoes at night for true and worthy shoemakers.

Thomas let her touch the welts gently, his fingers twitching when she brushed over tender spots. "They'll heal, you know. They always do."

"Why do you live in the bridge, if you have to hurt yourself to live there?"

"Because it hurts the rest of the fae even more. When I'm my human self, the iron doesn't burn me as much. But last night I had to cross the girders as a trow, and so you see." He shrugged. "I like my privacy."

"Let me get something for that." She went up the stairs to her bathroom, where she had some first-aid spray. She needed a moment to and reconcile her conflicting emotions. Thoughts roiled in her head. Thomas—who she was coming to care for more than she wanted to admit—brought far too strange a world with him. She wanted to go back to the time before the trip to the beach, when he was still an ordinary man who could kiss like the best prince in the best dream ever.

And yet...she could not deny her own excitement at perhaps finding an explanation for her clients, no matter how bizarre...

W
HILE
T
ESS WAS UPSTAIRS
, T
HOMAS
made a circuit of the downstairs rooms, checking door locks and window blinds, peering outside, and seeing nothing to alarm him beyond the wet green and autumn colors of Forest Park. Was it possible they'd really got away clean, at least until the Queen decided to call him? When he'd crawled under the Jeep looking for tendrils of Hunter's snares, he'd been hopeful, but uncertain, that he'd found it all. The smallest bit would eventually call the powerful Hunter to it. Had none of the market fae gone to the Queen? Was Hunter's binding and masking influence that great? For certainly it had been Hunter seeking Thomas—and perhaps Tess—last night. Hunter, back from the snapped ley line in the Coast Range and prowling Underbridge without most of his rabid entourage.

So many questions. Not even Sharpwit, with her contacts in the market and elsewhere, could have answered them. In the gray morning light filtered by the living room blinds, his eye was drawn to a dim purple gleam in the corner closest to the outside wall. He approached, curious, detecting a glamour-like shimmer with a sinking of his stomach.

That shade of purple, like the dark throats of irises and violets and shadows cast by moonlight, belonged to only one fae that he knew of: the Queen. He should have noticed it the night before as he secured Tess's home. There were a number of small items on the shelf in the corner, but most of them were ordinary. Bird feathers, curiously shaped stones, seashells, glass insulators from utility poles, skeleton keys. And mixed in with these were other, stranger objects more like the glass thimble Tess had discovered a few nights ago.

I find the oddest, most interesting things down here.

His heart jumped like a fish on a hook. Though he had suspected for days, now he'd confirmed the identity of the Queen's thief, unwitting though Tess was. He groaned, rubbing both raw hands over his face. "Oh, T—" He managed to stop himself before her truename tumbled out of his mouth, there where the Queen's things were waiting. She knew when he'd touched one near Underbridge. For all he knew, she could even hear what was said near them.

All he had to do was sweep them into a sack and return them to the Queen without revealing where he'd found them. Not only would the Queen sever more of the strands on his armband, but Tess could be free.

Except he didn't really believe that this time the Queen would let him get away with a vague explanation. She would want blood. She was never so angry as when she had been thwarted in little things. War, the Queen could handle. Simple frustration made her cruel and petty and committed to revenge.

Tess? Or his armband and slavery? What to choose?

While he debated, torn, he looked around for something to put the objects in and something to shield his skin so the Queen wouldn't be alerted the instant he touched them. Maybe he could simply scatter them at the market and let some other fae find them. Then he gritted his teeth. He'd only be consigning other fae to his own fate, or worse. It wouldn't matter to him if some of the nastier fae found the things, for they deserved the fates they earned, but what if it were a harmless, heedless hob or two, or worse, someone he actually cared a bit for, like Sharpwit?

But he still didn't understand why the items were so important to the Queen. That part of the equation had never made sense. He had too many unanswered questions, and his current situation made finding answers exceedingly difficult. Hunter was involved here, in some subversive, underhanded way Thomas didn't yet understand.

He clenched his fists against the temptation to gather up all the things and run. The objects had been safe enough here for a long time, even so close to the fairy mound. Surely another few hours, while he organized his thoughts or even paid a visit to Forest Park, wouldn't matter.

"Thomas?" Tess called, from the kitchen. "Come in here, where there's better light. This spray should take the sting out of your hands."

Thomas did as she bade him, standing next to her at the sink while she first gently washed his hands under warm running water and dried them on a fresh kitchen towel, then spritzed medicine on his palms until the burning stopped.

"There's still rust imbedded in the skin," she fretted. "I don't want to rub it too hard or the blisters might burst."

"It's much better. Thank you." He looked down at her bent head and careful, tender fingers holding his hands. When she looked up, it was as if she had her own form of Hunter's magical snare. Her dark eyes, so wide-set and hopeful. Her peony mouth, inviting a kiss, whether she knew it or not. Their gazes held for a long moment, then she smiled. Thomas couldn't quite return a genuine smile through his worry, but he felt his mouth quirk a little, and that seemed to satisfy her.

After a minute, Tess broke the spell. "More toast?"

"Yes, please." Milk and bread. If the fae knew about the ridiculous amounts of milk and bread humans kept in their houses, there would be more raids for food than raids for changelings. Only the fact that Thomas rarely had human money stopped him from eating nothing else. It took a long time to find enough dropped coins to buy a carton of milk, not to mention bread to go with it. Add to that the summer in a jar that was strawberry jam, and Thomas could have eaten until he was well past stuffed and died happy. He sat at the table again and watched Tess moving from little machine to little machine, warming the bread and covering it with deliciousness.

When the toast was ready, she sat down. "We should talk about the thing that was chasing us last night."

"Which thing?" he asked, though he knew she meant Hunter. He wanted to know a little more about what she had seen. Hunter's glamour had been fraying considerably, up in the darkness beneath the Burnside Bridge, surrounded by so much iron. He didn't think she'd used the stone to see, but he couldn't be sure.

"The one hiding up in the bridge, the one we ran from. It had red eyes, and it looked like Batman. Er, something in a black cloak. You called it Hunter."

"He's the Queen's huntsman. He leads the sluagh—legends call it the wild hunt—and tracks down her enemies or brings her meat."

Tess swallowed hard and put her toast down. "Brings her...meat?"

"The fae don't really live on dewdrops and nectar. You need to stop thinking fairies are sweet and kind and scatter pixie dust to give humans pleasant dreams. They're harsh things who find humans convenient toys or tools."

"But this...Hunter...was looking for you. Us."

"Yes. And I'm not sure why."

Her brows furrowed. "Does the queen want to eat you?"

Thomas shrugged, shaking his head. "I doubt it. I'm not convinced she sent him last night. I think he was working alone, on his own agenda. He didn't have the rest of his host with him, the solitary fae who serve him in return for scraps or a chance to work their nasty magics."

"He had a few bogles with him, you said—the ones I..." She bit her lip.

"Lookouts. They were watching your car, waiting for you to turn up again. Someone at the market knows what you drive and told a tale."

Her expression grew darker still. "That boy. The horse one."

"That's my guess." He finished off the toast and gulped the last of his milk. "Come with me a moment. I need to show you something." He rose, letting the human glamour shred away like shadow. It would be easier to convince her what had to be done if he didn't look so ordinary and human to her eyes. He held out his big trow hand, pleased and a bit surprised when Tess took it and followed him into the living room.

"Where did you get all these things?" Thomas gestured to the curio cabinet in the corner.

"Oh, here and there. Walks on the beach, hiking in Forest Park—" Thomas knew she saw him cringe, but did not comment upon it. Time enough later to drop the bomb she was living virtually atop the largest fairy mound in the world, if he ever needed to do that. Tess was reckless enough that she might take it into her head to visit the Queen on her own, if she knew that Forest Park was the Queen's home. "Some of them I found at the Saturday Market. Those are the
really
interesting ones. Like this one—" she reached for the thistle made of wood and bronze, but Thomas caught her hand before she could touch it.

"Yes, those are the ones I mean. I've been looking for those things for weeks. The Queen tasked me with finding them, and here they are."

"What?" She shook her head in confusion. "No, I found them—"

"Yes, you did. Now I want you to look at them through your stone."

Tess leaned backward warily, and her fingers went to the gray rock still on its thong around her neck. He was foolishly relieved she hadn't yet taken it off, even though it would almost certainly mean more trouble. It might yet save her, and it meant she believed him and his preposterous stories.

She lifted it to her right eye. He knew from her indrawn breath that she could see the glimmers of magic chasing over the surfaces of the items. She lowered the stone again, clutching it tightly as if it were a talisman.