Trueheart (Portland After Dark Book 1) (3 page)

"No, thank you." Her fingers curled more tightly around the strap of her cross-body bag as she tried to look unapproachable, uninterested, fiercely confident, and aware of her surroundings all at the same time. Tonight it was difficult, because she wasn't simply moving through the throng, she was lingering. She couldn't expect to be ignored.

"It's the best, just in from eastern Washington. That high desert grass, you gotta try it!"

Tess glanced at the man, who was moving too close with his cupped handful of joints. They were odd, fat little doobies with twisted ends tied shut with what looked like Christmas tinsel. "I said no thank you." She put an edge in her voice and he backed off, nearly stepping on the offerings of the bookseller behind him.

"Watch it, man," said the bookseller. "Stay outta my space."

"Peace," said the man with the smokes. Tess left them to their argument. She passed another blanket covered with knitted hats, and a street girl with a ferret on a leash. The ferret gave Tess a long, direct look, or perhaps it was her imagination. She shook her head, sidling away, keeping Aaron in her peripheral vision.

A sleepy-looking young man lounged against one of the concrete pillars that held up the Burnside Bridge. "You and me, babe. Meant to be. Fate."

It didn't even provoke a grunt from her. The young man was almost as handsome as Aaron, but there was something unpleasant about him. A breeze off the Willamette brought with it the familiar weedy stink of the river, even through the moistness of the rainy night. The young man slid a hand down his flat belly to his crotch and licked his lips, laughing when she turned away repulsed.

Sex, drugs and rock-and-roll
, Tess thought, continuing to edge through the vendors and loiterers, the city kids out for thrills, stepping out of the way of a skater boy cruising swiftly past on his board. Off to one side, a woman was grilling bits of meat on a hibachi standing on a three-legged card table. She had rigged a golf umbrella to shelter the grill from the weather, and replaced the missing table leg with a dented trash can. The meat smelled both burnt and spoiled.

Perhaps it was her heightened awareness now that she was following Aaron through the market, but the place seemed more inimical than it had in the past. She felt jumpy and nervous. She told herself it was foolish to feel so paranoid. These people couldn't help their situations. They were poor and homeless. What they needed was kindness and understanding, not revulsion. Moving on, Tess carefully avoided the space where two people leaned against each other like herd animals, one keeping watch while the other slept curled and dream-twitching on the pavement. At last she paused near a woman who sat on a paint bucket behind a tiny plastic patio table. Sitting with her back to the chilly concrete of a bridge footing, the woman shuffled ceaselessly through a deck of tarot cards, droning,

"
Searching for love,

hungry for fame,

I give you truth

when you give your name
."

Though she'd seen the fortuneteller here before, for the first time Tess really looked at the woman, who grinned up at her from a face as glossy and seamed as a walnut shell. In the dimness the woman could have been any age from twenty to eighty, hidden in half a dozen tattered shawls. Tess fumbled in her pocket and came up with a five-dollar bill. The woman stretched out two fingers, and with a flicker the bill was folded and gone.

"Give me your name, pretty girl."

"Julie."

The woman shook her head. "Not your truename, no. Truename, pretty girl."

"It's my name tonight."

"Truename, truename, or the Old Ones, they say nothing you should heed."

Tess slid a glance at Aaron, who had left the circle of dancers, but was still jitterbugging his sleepwalking way through the market. She couldn't follow yet. "I'll take my chances. What fame can five bucks bring me, madam?"

The woman thrust the cards at Tess. "You show me. Shuffle till they feel right to you."

Tess leafed through them absently. The cards felt dusty and sticky, and she wanted to wipe her hands on her jeans. Aaron had paused at a barrel filled with fire. Three men stood back from it a short distance, heads down, caps pulled low, jackets zipped. Could this be it? The men fed a paperback to the fire, page by fluttering page. Each burned with a brief flare, lighting Aaron's blank brown eyes and shadowing his cheeks.

"Pretty Julie."

Tess jerked her gaze back to the tarot reader and put the deck in the woman's waiting palm.

"He's a pretty boy too. Seen him here lots." The woman's chin pointed toward the fire barrel.

"Have you?" Tess tried to control her eagerness.

A slow smile creased the woman's face. "Gave me his truename, so I spoke him true."

"He's a friend of mine. I'm trying to make sure he stays out of trouble."

The shawled head shook. "Too late, too pretty." The cards practically spun down from the deck onto the table.

"Where'd he find this trouble, so I can help keep him out of it from now on?"

The head kept shaking. Her forefinger dithered between two of the cards on the table, and suddenly she swept up all the cards. The deck vanished in the shawls. "Go away, pretty Julie."

"What about my fame?"

"No truename."

"What about my five bucks, then?"

The woman stood up, folding the table and stuffing its legs into the bucket. "Not my problem. You paid, you lied, I tried, but you lied, you lied..." The singsong continued as she drew her shawls tighter, took the bucket by the handle, and melted away into the shadows.

She didn't move like an old woman. For a moment Tess considered following and continuing to pry for more information about Aaron, but caution stopped her. It was worth the five dollars to know Aaron came here often. If the fortuneteller had seen him, others would have too; Tess just needed to find them. She was turning to check on Aaron when a flutter of ribbon high up in a notch on the concrete bridge footing caught her eye.

Even tall Tess had to stretch to reach it. She tugged at the ribbon, and something small and weighty came away from the hole with it, swinging like a pendulum. She turned to bring it into the light and keep an eye on Aaron, who was moving away from the fire barrel toward the dark, glinting river. The men at the barrel watched him go.

It was too good an opportunity to miss. Tess stuffed the small thing in the side pouch of her purse and meandered up to the barrel.

"Hey," she said.

"Hey, yourself." The men were wary, pulling their caps even lower.

"You know that boy?" She gestured with her chin toward Aaron, tucking her hands deep in the pockets of her sweater jacket.

"What's it to ya?" the tallest of the three asked.

"He's a friend of mine. I'm trying to keep him out of trouble."

They grinned in the dancing light. "Too late, bitch, too late."

She leaned forward a little. "What do you mean, too late?"

"The lady, she ride him. You wanna ride him too, right?"

"Do you mean horse, heroin?" Tess wrinkled her brow. She hadn't heard of a drug called the lady, but maybe it was a new name for something that had been around a while. Still, the man's tone was nothing short of lascivious.

"No,
the lady
. You wanna keep out of that, you know what's good for you."

"The lady.
What
lady?"

They tossed in a few pages from the book. Tess blinked watering eyes in the sudden flare of sparks and acrid smoke. In those seconds, the men left her standing alone at the barrel.

Well, she hadn't expected to be able to walk right up and say, "See that young man? He's on some really bad shit, and I need you to take me to his dealer."

Aaron was almost out of sight at the riverbank. Tess hurried after him. She jumped the low chains that separated the marketplace from the roadway. Looking hastily both ways, she jaywalked in the darkness.

T
HOMAS
LINGERED ON THE PERIPHERY
of the goblin market, watching without seeming to watch. He recognized most of the fae here, and even several of the humans who were drawn like moths to the dark flicker of glamour. Some were homeless street people, shuffling through the market gleaning crumbs or coins dropped over the day, mumbling to themselves or shouting at invisible demons. Invisible, that is, to most humans roaming the Underbridge. The street people could sometimes see the fae for what they were. Some were junkies, like the kid reeling around the fairy musician thumping at his skin-covered drums.

And some were normal, like the tall woman walking tensely through the market, one hand wrapped around the strap of her sling bag, and the other jammed in a pocket as though to keep her fingers away from temptation. He'd seen her before, and she always caught his eye with her height, the swing of her brown ponytail, and the intent, concerned look on her vaguely pretty face. She didn't belong in the goblin market, yet she came again and again.

Of course, he could say the same of many of the humans here.

Thomas wondered what she saw. She didn't show the same dread some of the streetfolk exhibited, yet each time she singled out someone, it was the fae she approached. Was she fae herself, and if so, why couldn't he see through her glamour? Or was she like him, living in the half-world, with her human form uppermost? Or was she human, with the second sight that permitted her to glimpse the fae world without revealing its deeper bones to her?

He paused at Sharpwit the hob's tiny booth to buy his dinner, a portable lump of fungus and stewed caterpillars and furred moth bodies with lamb's quarters. The whole mess was rolled into a large grape leaf and drizzled with honey squeezed from the comb, bee-parts and all. It would do until he found some bread or shifted back into his human form long enough to consume human food. He did that less and less, since it took increasingly more effort to remain human, and the overly processed foods the humans ate these days sometimes disagreed with his fae-altered digestion.

"Well met, Thomas," murmured Sharpwit, poking skewers through insect pupae and wedges of late apples, and setting them to roast over her tiny brazier. The rising, smoky fragrance, like what Thomas remembered of onions quick-fried in butter, made him feel strangely homesick for the tavern where the Queen had found him.

"What shall I owe you?" He took a bite of his dinner. He could trust Sharpwit not to take advantage of his open-ended bargain. Underbridge belonged to Thomas, and the fae knew it.

"I want some grubs from the tunnels in Forest Park, next time you can fill a pouch. My herd is thinning. Business has been good."

"Consider it done." Thomas turned back to the market, and again the tall woman caught his eye. She was talking to the redcaps, which wasn't a smart idea if she wanted to get out in one piece. But whatever she said to them made them nervous, because they flitted away soon enough, leaving her standing by their steaming dye vat. The market was filling as dusk came on more fully. The woman moved steadily through the vibrant and humming crowd, heading for an exit at Naito Parkway.

Out of curiosity, Thomas followed, munching. He had to start looking for the thief somewhere, since he had not the slightest idea what nor whom he was looking for. Might as well start with a market regular, human or not.

The woman was tall and girlishly slender, too thin, even to eyes accustomed to the seeming fragility of the fae. She had a neck like a stem, with a clean jaw line that spoke of determination and stubbornness. She wore a dark blue sweater over her jeans, and the evening drizzle beaded like diamonds scattered in the weave. Her brown hair was scraped back into an elastic at the nape of her neck, lank and straight in the damp air. She was no fashion plate, but he liked her stride—focused and serious, her rubber-soled shoes practical in the urban terrain.

When she glanced over her shoulder, he saw her eyes were dark—probably brown, to match her hair—and her mouth looked soft and full as crushed peonies. A moment later she stepped over the low swag of chains that separated the Underbridge from the roadway, and crossed the street.

After a short pause to shove the last of his dinner into his mouth and reestablish his human form, Thomas followed. It wouldn't do for the girl to discover a trow—splayed ears, nose like a potato, hyena hair—trailing behind her. Outside the goblin market, the general glamour that masked everything like smoke or fog wore away.

She crossed the narrow strip of park lawn that bordered the river for a mile and headed north. A hundred feet farther on, she paused, drawing close to a maple tree as if to hide. Thomas's eyebrows rose. Suspicious behavior from her, indeed. Along the path ahead of her, the boy she followed stopped to sit on a lump of concrete and stone, head hanging, hands limp at his sides. After a moment Thomas recognized him as the junkie kid who had been whirling around the drummer in Underbridge. He stepped into the shadow of a nearby statue and waited. He wished for a second snack.

He was content to watch the girl watching the boy until another figure approached from further north. The band around his arm grew warm, and Thomas realized the entrant into the little tableau was the Queen.

Fae glamour was a remarkable thing. Even after two centuries of servitude, and regularly using glamours himself, Thomas was still startled and blinded when he saw the Queen making an effort to charm a human. The ruler of the Unseelie Court was making her way along the walk, hurrying, as if to a rendezvous. She looked young and fresh, in a dreamy, drugging euphoric haze that Thomas remembered like a kick to his gut. Her beauty, when she chose, could make any fae burn with desire, so the effect on humans was devastating. Along with her unhesitating brutality and her total commitment to the Unseelie Court, it was what made—and kept—her the Queen.

Rendezvous it was, because the boy lifted his head, still sluggish, when the Queen drifted up to him, her hair streaming behind her as if lifted by the wind, though the night was still and rainy. The two came together in a ferocious embrace, consuming in its fervor and fury.