Darklight (14 page)

She beckoned Sonny and the others out of the room in her wake.

“What is it that ails him, then?” Annis asked, her white eyes fixed upon Mabh as she poured a tall goblet of wine for the Queen from a table by her stool.

“Darkness,” Mabh said, gulping at the wine. “Pure as any I’ve ever felt.” She stared into the depth of the goblet as if seeking the answer to a question. “And
light,
” she murmured in a wondering voice.

Annis and Sonny exchanged a confused glance. Bob didn’t take his eyes off the queen. Mabh ran a dainty finger around the edge of her crimson mouth and shook her head.

“I have formidable knowledge of blood magick, I think we all agree. And this
is
a kind of blood magick. But it is far beyond even my ken. Something eats away deep at the core of him—brightness and shadows all twisted together—and it is as though he is being attacked from the
inside
out. I know of no spells or charms that can do such a thing. It makes no sense—such a thing is impossible.”

“Impossible?” Sonny asked.

The queen laughed briefly and without mirth. “Well, discounting the likelihood that Auberon has cursed
himself
. . . then yes. Impossible.”

R
ehearsal that evening was
not
going well.

It was the last rehearsal before Quentin flew to England for his “dear old Mumsy’s” birthday, giving the cast a break for a week, and Kelley had really wanted to get some good substantive work done before he left. She also wanted to take her mind off the events of the past few days. Sadly, it seemed that such a thing was not to be.

“
Yes!
That’s
exactly
the way I want you to say that line,” Quentin interrupted Kelley from the darkened house. “
If
we were doing this play as a cautionary exercise on how NOT to deliver your lines!”

Kelley sighed. “Don’t mince words, chief. Go ahead. Say what’s really on your mind.”

“It’s not what’s on
my
mind, Miss Winslow, but what’s on
yours
. Or, rather, what your
mind
is most definitely NOT on—and that would be
this
rehearsal and
those
words. When Juliet describes lightning”—Quentin waved his hands in the air like a Muppet—“I want to feel as if she’s
actually,
at least
once
in her life, seen a
storm
. And when she says the word
joy,
I’d
like
to believe that she’s capable of
experiencing
that emotion.”

“Ouch,” said Alec Oakland. “That’s a little harsh, Q, don’t you think?”

Kelley shook her head at her Romeo. “No. He’s right.”

“Of course I am.” Quentin glared at Alec. “Even
you
were good by comparison.
Woe
betide the unfortunate director.”

“I’m sorry, Quentin,” Kelley said apologetically. “I’m feeling a little off my game. Maybe we should just jump to where I stab myself and call it a day?”

“Don’t tempt me.” Quentin spun sharply and hallooed up to the stage manager in the tech booth. “Mindi! Check the newspaper. Weather forecast.”

There was a far-off rustling of pages.

Mindi’s voice drifted down: “Thundershowers through the evening and into the night.”

“Miss Winslow,” Quentin turned on his heel, “
you
are dismissed.”

“. . . You’re kidding.”

“Your acting assignment for the evening is this: Go play in the rain. Jump over puddles. Experience the
lightning
. Experience
joy
. Just do us all a favor and
don’t
stand under any tall trees. I don’t have an understudy for
this
show.”

She still hadn’t replaced the umbrella that she was sure Bob had stolen from her during the last show. There was an ominous rumble from the skies outside, muted, but Kelley could hear it echoing down through the old converted church’s bell tower.
Damned Storm Hags better not have anything to do with this. . . .

“Kelley?” Jack knocked on her dressing room door with one knuckle and poked his head in.

“Hey, Jack—c’mon in.” Kelley waved the older actor over the threshold. “Hope you weren’t really looking forward to throwing me around the set tonight. I’ve been ordered to go play in the rain, if you can believe it.”

“So I heard. Do what you gotta do, kiddo. Maybe Quentin’s right—when your head’s not in the game, it’s hard for your heart to be.”

“I really sucked out there tonight, huh?”

“No. But I would call you . . . preoccupied. Are you okay?”

“Yup. I’m good. Great.” The last thing she wanted to do was talk about her present emotional state. The truth of it was that going through the romance of the balcony scene with Alec had done nothing but remind her of Sonny. All that gorgeous, poetic language and talk of “true-love’s passion” and suddenly Kelley had started to feel extremely fragile. She’d had to clamp down just to keep from losing it completely. Her performance had come off as flat and unbelievable because anything else would have ended in tears. She cast about desperately for a change of subject. “Hey—are you keeping your beard like that for the part?” she asked, gesturing to the full beard that graced Jack’s jawline.

“‘A sable, silvered,’ you mean?” he said, quoting from
Hamlet
. “Hell, yes. I’m getting too old to use Grecian Formula on my face fur. Takes too long.”

“Pff.” She waved away his modesty. “I think you look smashing.”

“Not quite as elegant as my goateed Oberon, perhaps,” Jack said and struck a subtly haughty pose.

“Best fairy king I’ve ever seen.” Kelley smiled and spun away so that Jack couldn’t see her face. She bit her lip, trying hard not to think of the real Auberon.

He’s dying,
Bob whispered in her mind.

He’s my king.
She could still see the misery in Sonny’s eyes.
What would you have me do?

Jack put his ever-present coffee cup down on her makeup table and leaned forward. “How are you, Kelley?” he asked. “Really?”

“Oh . . . a little lonely, I suppose,” she said, swallowing a watery sob and blinking back tears at the admission.

“Is this about that boy of yours?”

“Some of it. I guess. It’s complicated.”

“He’s still not come back from . . . wherever he went?”

“Nope.”

“You think he will?”

“God, Jack, I hope so. . . .” Her voice broke on the word
hope
.

“You want to talk about it?”

“Not unless I have a written promise that you won’t call the guys with the butterfly nets on me.” Kelley almost laughed out loud at the imagery—only because she really
did
have wings. Or, at least, she used to.

“I’ve heard a lot of weird stuff in my time, kid.” Jack smiled gently. “Don’t forget—I’ve been in the theater all my life.”

“I know, Jack.” She smiled at him. “Thanks for the offer. I just . . . my sob story wouldn’t make any sense to you right now—trust me. Like I said, it’s pretty complicated.”

“Everything is, when you’re seventeen,” he said, retrieving his cup. “And I do
not
say that to be patronizing. Things just are, that’s all.”

“How ’bout when you’re a hundred and seventeen?” Kelley murmured, not really having meant to say it out loud.

Jack just laughed. “I’ll let you know when I get there.”

Not if I get there first,
she thought, with a pang of regret.

When she stepped out of the theater, the skies opened up.

The rain sheeted across the courtyard, blinding. Kelley put her head down and almost ran into Tyff, who was standing in the midst of the downpour, dry as a desert flower as though she held an invisible umbrella. Or perhaps the raindrops had just decided en masse that it would be to the good of all if they fell elsewhere.

Clinging to the tips of Tyff’s fingers was a sticky note from the bright pink pad she kept by the phone in their apartment. It said “Meet Maddox tonight” and gave an address for an apartment on Central Park West.

“I was going to leave you the message at home.” She shrugged. “But then it occurred to me that I kind of have the hots for this Maddox guy. And so I thought I’d go with.”

“Uh . . . okay.” Kelley took the note, watching as the ink blurred and ran in the pelting rain. “Did Madd say what he wanted?” she asked, mystified.

“He really didn’t.” Tyff looked at Kelley. “Are you ever going to buy an umbrella?”

Maddox opened the door to the darkened Central Park West penthouse and stepped aside for her to enter. Kelley struggled to keep it together as she stepped over the threshold. She knew instantly that this wasn’t Madd’s place. It was Sonny’s. This was Sonny’s home in the mortal realm—she could
feel
it. The very air in the room seemed to whisper to her of his presence there. She could feel him. Smell him. She swallowed to ease the ache in her throat as she imagined him walking through the wide French doors, out onto the terrace with its spectacular view of the city.

“Dark in here,” Maddox said, switching on a soft glow of hidden overhead lights. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Tyff said, sweeping into the apartment after Kelley, just before Maddox closed the door. “I like the dark. It’s more romantic.”

“Oh.” The Janus stepped back, surprised and a little puzzled to see Tyff there. “Hello, lady. When I gave you the message, I wasn’t really expecting you to come along with Kelley.”

“I had to give her the note in person—she seems to have misplaced all other means of communication.” Tyff waved one hand airily. “I didn’t mind. I wasn’t busy tonight. You know—for a change. And it’s Tyff. Or Tyffanwy. No one calls me lady who isn’t Fae or a thrall. And you, handsome, unless I miss my guess, are neither of those things.”

“Knock it off, Tyff,” Kelley snapped, uneasy. “You know perfectly well he’s a Janus.”

“Gods,” Tyff rolled her luminous eyes and took off her jacket. “She’s a little touchy these days,” she said to Maddox in a mock whisper.

Kelley ignored the goad. If Tyff wanted to impress Madd with her scintillating wit, she was going to have to do it all on her own. Kelley was in no mood to play straight man.

“Uh . . . yeah.” Maddox closed the front door and moved to sit on the arm of the leather couch in the middle of the large living room. He looked tired. Edgy. His open, handsome face was creased in a frown. “Kelley’s not the only one,” he said, pushing back strands of sandy-colored hair from out of his eyes.

“What’s going on, Madd?” Kelley asked. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m seriously thinking of going ASAP, Kelley.”

Kelley blinked. “I’m pretty sure you’re not.”

“A-S-A-P,” Maddox assured her.

In spite of the seriousness of the conversation, Kelley had to suppress a smile. Changelings, she’d discovered, tended to achieve widely varying degrees of success when it came to getting a handle on modern slang. A few of them had only recently discovered the word
groovy
.

“If you mean
AWOL,
Maddox,” she amended, “and I
think
you do, then my response to you would also come in the form of an acronym.”

Maddox raised a questioning eyebrow.

“WTF?” She watched as he worked that one through and then glared at her in mild disapproval. “Sorry. Sorry . . . but what, exactly, are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about the way things have been going with the Guard.” His expression grew troubled again. “Aaneel’s getting really hard-arsed about the Lost Fae. I mean—brutal.”

Kelley looked over at Tyff, who’d lost her playful smile and whose eyes flashed dangerously as Maddox spoke.

“Look—I’m all for keeping things in check. And there’s some among the Fair Folk—present company excluded and pardon my saying so, but— there’s some Lost Fae that aren’t exactly harmless. To the general mortal populace, you know?” The Janus twisted his fingers together as he spoke, cracking his knuckles. “Now, I don’t have a problem dealing with that type, if you take my meaning. But I’m certainly not about to go
looking
for some stray wood nymph to chop into kindling for no good reason.”

“Well, that’s a great comfort,” Tyff said coldly.

“We’ve always left the Lost Ones alone, so long as they behaved themselves. But Aaneel and Godwyn and maybe even some of the others—Ghost, probably, but he’s kind of a freak anyway—suddenly they’ve decided to take the fight to them. I don’t like it.”

“Do your feelings have anything to do with Chloe?” Kelley asked quietly. “Maddox? Is that what this is all about?”

He frowned deeply. “I’m afraid for her,” he said. His eyes drifted toward the closed bedroom door, and in the silence that stretched out, Kelley heard a whisper of song.

She jumped to her feet. “You brought her
here
?”

“It was the only place I could think of to keep her safe,” Maddox protested. “It’s protected by better wards than I’ve got set up at my place, and Sonny wouldn’t mind.”

“Sonny wouldn’t
mind
?” Kelley glared. “Are you so sure about that, Maddox?”

“She saved your life once, you know,” Maddox said softly, reading her expression. “And Mabh and Auberon both made her suffer. Dearly.”

Chloe was curled up on a corner of the big bed, knees drawn up almost to her chin.
Sonny’s bed,
Kelley thought with sullen jealousy. When she herself had never even set foot in that room before now. She shook her head.
Don’t be ridiculous. It’s not like she’s here with Sonny.

Tyff was staring at her, she knew. Kelley tried to let go of the sudden reactionary tension that thrust her shoulders up around her ears. A shaft of light, the orange glow from the city outside the window, shone through the gap in the curtains onto Chloe’s face.

“Chloe? I’ve brought someone to see you.” Maddox turned to Kelley and murmured, “She’s been singing that song from the play you were in—that and another one I don’t know—but those are the only things she sings now. Over and over. I don’t know why, but I thought . . . maybe it would help her to see you. I didn’t know what else to do.” He shrugged helplessly.

Kelley couldn’t imagine how her being there could possibly help. She could barely even stand to look at the Siren.

But then, when she did look—really
looked
at her—she saw that the Faerie girl was pale and thin, almost birdlike in the way she moved. She seemed terribly fragile. And—from the way he looked at her—Kelley knew that Maddox loved her. She wondered briefly if Tyff had noticed, but the Summer Fae’s gaze was fastened sympathetically on the Siren.

On the terrible scars that, Kelley finally noticed, crisscrossed her throat like claw marks.

“As I said,” Maddox murmured, following her gaze, “Mabh made her suffer.”

Chloe hugged herself, swaying gently from side to side and whispering thready bits of song as they approached.

Kelley stood before her. “You saved my life,” she said.

Her smile was crooked; her gaze, haunted. “For a little price.”

“Why?”

“Pretty, pretty music.” Chloe blinked up at her as if the answer to the question were self-evident. “Almost as pretty as
his
 . . .” She sang a fragment of an old song. An old Irish lullaby. The song was filled with such sadness. Such longing.