Faerie Blood (17 page)

Christopher went completely still save for his hands, which clenched into fists around his knife and fork until I wondered if they’d bend with the strength of his grip. Then he turned a hard, raw gaze on Millie. “Why do you think I’ve kept movin’, Gran?” he said, tight and harsh.

“Why don’t you explain it to me, sonny?” she shot back. “From where I’m sitting, all I see is a boy who’s turned his back on everything his people stand for! Do I have to lecture you on your blood, too?”

“There’s only one thing I need to know about my blood. It got my mother killed.”

The words ripped out of Christopher like bullets from a silenced gun, no less forceful for their lack of volume. I felt each one as an odd little flinch to the prickling that still coursed across my senses, and I stared up at him, distraught. Like a witness to a car wreck, Jude winced in ‘oh crap, that had to hurt’ sympathy.

Gravely, her gaze taking on a gleam of understanding, Aggie said, “We’re sorry for your loss, Christopher.” Jude and I hastened to echo the sentiment, though neither of us managed anything more eloquent than “yeah” and “me too”.

His only acknowledgement to us all was a shrug of one broad shoulder, and he avoided all our eyes, staring instead down at his plate as if suddenly sickened by the sight of the food before him. Then he lurched up out of his seat, dismay slashing across his face. “Thank you,” he said, but it was toneless, mechanical, as though his manners dictated some sort of response while his mind was thousands of miles away—maybe all the way back in Newfoundland, I thought. To Aggie he added, “Sorry. I can’t. I just can’t.”

My aunt was unperturbed. “There’s a love seat in my den, son,” she said. “Why don’t you go back there and take it easy for a bit?”

Christopher snatched the reprieve, giving Aggie a shaky, grateful nod before he fled. I watched him go, but as his eyes met mine in passing, I almost wished I hadn’t. His cheeks flamed, and in visible chagrin, he tore his attention away from me as he bolted off down the hall.

My own cheeks flushed hot from embarrassment and indignation on Christopher’s behalf. I was getting more and more aggravated by Millicent’s ripping into him, and I opened my mouth to demand an explanation. Before I could Jude beat me to the punch—which was for the best, since she was far more civil than I would have been.

“So, um… what just happened here?”

Millie told us little more than we’d already heard. But what she shared made a few more things come together.

“All the Warders are related, if you trace the family lines back far enough,” she said grudgingly, poking with her fork at what food remained on her plate, as if Christopher had taken her appetite with him when he’d gone. “So we look out for each other. We have to do it long-distance, since we’re all bound to the cities we Ward, but we do it. Phone, letters, Internet, whatever works. And not a damn one of us has been able to find out what happened to Damhnait MacSimidh.” The old woman turned her head, squinting off down the hallway, and for an instant she looked actively concerned. “That boy’s the only one who knows, and he’s been hiding from the lineage all this time.”

“Seems to me,” remarked my aunt, “that the first Warder to lay eyes on him in sixteen years might want to remember that the boy lost his mother. We’re both old enough to know how hard that is, even after many years.” Her tone was mild as always, but her eyes were stern again. Though Millicent Merriweather was hardly a misbehaving child, I suddenly suspected that Aggie was about to lay down a few choice words about stepping all over the feelings of a bereaved young man.

The concern vaporized from Millicent’s expression. “Goddammit, Aggie,” she snapped, thumping the table with a fist and leaning belligerently forward in her chair, “I’m eighty-five! My power’s failing right along with my eyes. Trolls and hostile Sidhe are crossing my Wards without me sensing ’em, and if you really want me to keep on looking after this niece of yours”—she then thrust a finger at me—”then I ain’t got time to coddle that boy. I need him, and so does she!”

Jude and I exchanged uncomfortable looks, and my friend’s features mirrored the question shooting through my head: whether we could retreat in Christopher’s wake. My own face must have been broadcasting that thought, too. Aggie, who knew all of my looks as well as I knew hers, swung a glance around to me. “Millie and I will clear the table and wash up. Kendie, you and Jude go call your workplace. See what you can do about getting today off.”

“And after you do that,” barked Millicent, snapping a look around to me along with Aggie, “you girlies get on Aggie’s computer. Until I can get through to the Queen, I ain’t betting on the Seelie Court telling me who their own troublemakers are, so that leaves other Warders. I’ll give you a few email addresses you can try, and you can tell ’em I sent you.”

I got up, and Jude did likewise, but I didn’t retreat just yet. Instead I eyed Millie. “You said you wanted to have more words with me this morning,” I reminded her. “What are you going to do besides dishes?”

She looked no more inclined to coddle me than she did Christopher. If my aunt was the stern-but-fair schoolteacher, then Millicent was the irascible principal ready to take a paddle to my backside, and she sounded it, too. “I’ve got to walk the Wards on the city still, and if that boy ain’t going to take his turn at bat yet, I damn well better get to it. And I meant what I said.” Her finger thrust out at me once more. “You stay put, right here, till I get back.”

“Got that the first time,” I retorted, thrusting my own finger right back at her. “Did you not get it the first time when I asked you to back off of Christopher?” My voice rose, and right along with it, the prickling in my blood. I barely noticed; I was too pissed off. “For God’s sake, at least wait till he’s over the concussion before you rip into him some…”

The prickling surged, enough to make me dizzy for a few seconds. As I trailed off, wobbling where I stood, Millicent jumped to her feet and seized my hands in an iron grip. “Tamp it down!” she commanded. I felt a second surge rise out of her, splashing over me like a bucket of water over a campfire. “You’re in charge of the magic, so put a lid on it!”

My temper—and the prickling—faltered and began to subside as I struggled to steady myself. But I wasn’t quite ready to let my temper go. “First tell me you’ll stop arguing with Christopher.”

Millie glowered up at me, opened her mouth, and then snapped it shut. She kept up her hold on my fingers—and her stream of power overwhelming my senses—but that earlier trace of concern crept back into her eyes. “All right, girlie,” she said, sighing. “For what it’s worth, and for what good it’ll do, I’ll give him as much time as we can spare.”

I wanted to believe her. After a second or two, I realized I did. Closing my eyes, fighting to calm down, I sucked in a huge breath and slowly let it out again. “Thanks,” I mumbled. As I did, the prickling died.

Only then did Millie release me, in more ways than one; her grip slackened, and then her magic retreated from my awareness. I stood there giddy and a little breathless, and it took me more effort than it should have to focus on the sight of the old woman stepping cautiously back from me. “Go call in. And maybe talk to that—” She caught herself, and then finished, “Talk to Christopher.”

Surprised, I blinked and looked back and forth from one face to another. “What, me?” But Millicent was already turning away, grabbing the first of the dishes off the table.

Aggie smiled faintly and waved me towards her telephone. “Make the call from the den, baby,” she suggested. Which wasn’t any more helpful. But I knew a large stone Hint when I saw one, and so I stumbled over to grab the handset off its cradle. Jude followed me, and it was to Jude that I murmured a request for a clue.

“When did this become my problem?”

“Duh,” my friend murmured back. “You like him, don’t you?”

She was right. As we headed down the hall, chagrin heating my face and Jude’s wry, knowing gaze blithely avoiding mine, I didn’t try to deny it.

I just hoped it would help.

We found Christopher in the den, slumped on Aggie’s old love seat with his head tilted back against the wall behind him, rubbing his fingertips across his brow. When Jude and I came in, however, he immediately sat up. “What was that I felt out there?” he asked before I could apologize for intruding.

“Me kind of losing it a little,” I admitted, edging further into the room and shrugging as offhandedly as I could. “You mind if we hang out in here a bit?” To my relief he shook his head, so I sank down into the empty spot next to him on the love seat. “Aunt Aggie wants me to call in sick,” I said then, holding up the phone.

“And Millicent wants us to get on the computer,” Jude added, plopping onto the chair by the desk and idly swiveling this way and that. “Says she wants us to send some email to some Warders for her, try to find out about those guys at the bar.”

Christopher’s features twisted; he rubbed his forehead once again, pulling his fingers down along the bridge of his nose as though his headache had gotten a second wind. “Probably knows what she’s about, then,” he said hollowly.

I watched him, frowning, all too aware of what Jude had told me coming down the hallway—and of Millicent’s revelations about his history. Neither one seemed appropriate for comment. “If it means anything, I got her to promise she’d stop giving you such a hard time,” I ventured instead.

That made him blink and lower his hand. Hazel eyes going wide, he regarded me with a touch of startled wonder. “You did? Anythin’ to do with you losin’ it?”

“I got a little cranky, I guess. It seemed to work.” I offered him a rueful little smile, but I couldn’t hold it for long, and I looked down fretfully at my hands as I shifted the phone from palm to palm. “And I guess this thing going on with me gets cranky when I do. Millie kind of had to make me stop it.”

My little confession seemed to make more sense to Christopher than it did to me; for a long moment he studied me, and then he nodded. All he said, though, was a quiet, “Thank you.”

Just two syllables and no more, but they felt like an achievement. “Hey, no worries, big guy,” I answered, grinning, and never mind Jude pretending to ignore us as she fired up Aggie’s computer. Just before the screen filled up with the machine’s boot-up output, I caught a glimpse of her reflection within it—and the sneaky little grin
she
was keeping out of my line of sight. “I figure somebody around here ought to be making you feel at home, you know?”

His eyes lightening, Christopher said, “You’d best be callin’ in.”

“Right.” I’d almost forgotten about the phone. My grin eased down a bit, but I let it linger as I punched in the number. And though I didn’t want to, I got up to lean past Jude and type in my login ID and password on the keyboard. “I set the box up for her,” I explained. “I have a login on it.”

Jude nodded and swiveled around in the chair to consider Christopher. “So,” she said brightly, “you’re from Newfoundland, huh? Do you do music at all? I’ve heard of a few great bands from there—”

Though Christopher’s morose expression concerned me, I had to tune out Jude’s attempt at cheering him up. After two rings, the voice of our company’s receptionist said with amiable courtesy, “nTrust Networking, may I help you?”

“Yes please, can you connect me with James Selkirk’s extension?”

The receptionist patched me through, and my boss picked up instantly. “nTrust, James speaking,” he said, with that sort of brisk, distracted air he always got whenever he was answering the phone and reading his email at the same time.

“Hi, James, this is Kendis. Listen, I know I should have asked about this before we shipped, but something’s come up.” I paced with the phone in my hand as I spoke, thinking fast about what to tell him. I still didn’t like the idea of lying about illness on either my part or Jude’s, and so I took the only option that seemed left: as much of the truth as seemed safe. “It’s, um, a personal family matter. And I was just wondering if it’d be okay if Jude and I both took the day off? She’s offered to help me out—”

“Excuse me,” my boss interrupted, distraction leaving his voice and perceptible confusion replacing it. “Who did you say you were?”

I blinked, frowned, and stopped pacing. “Kendis,” I repeated, a warning bell chiming in the back of my mind. This wasn’t the first time James had been this distracted answering his phone—and ship parties sometimes left even my usually efficient employer a little ragged the next morning.

But he’d never failed to recognize my name.

Something in my tone must have alerted Jude, for she broke off her chatter to Christopher as I said, “Y’know… tester Kendis? Sits three offices down the hall from you? Likes to listen to Afro Celt Sound System?”

James remained polite, but he also remained baffled. “Are you sure you have the right number? There’s no Kendis on my team.”

Christopher sat up straighter on the love seat. “Hang up,” he urged, his eyes taking on a spark of amber.

Unnerved, I blurted into the receiver, “Ah, let me check… gee, you’re right! I screwed up the number. I’m so sorry for bothering you, bye!”

“No problem. Have a nice day.”

Click. Silence. I stood there holding the phone as I tried to assimilate what had just happened, and then I looked in worried bewilderment at the others.

“Ken?” Jude prodded, paling as she took in the look on my face.

“Our boss,” I said, “just had no idea who I am.”

“Two words, chica: not good,”
said Jude, urgency sharpening her features as she snatched the phone out of my hands and hit the redial button. When the receptionist answered her call, though, my friend launched into her brightest, perkiest voice.

“Hi! Can you put me through to James Selkirk? Thank you very much, yes, I’ll hold… hi, James, this is Jude.” Her eyebrows went up, and between her expression and the words she said next, I could tell she was having a far different conversation with our boss than the one I’d just had. “Yeah, you pegged me. I need today off. I know I should have asked in advance, but it’s urgent… no, no, I’m fine. Friend of mine’s having a family emergency, though. Her name’s Kendis Thompson. Have I mentioned her to you before? Oh, I could have sworn…” Jude frowned at me then, her face in direct contrast to her airy tone, but kept on talking. “Yes, that was her just now, actually, sorry about that; she’s pretty shaken up right now and I was having her call in on my phone. She must have hit the speed dial for you by mistake… no, it’s okay. Anyway, she needs me to give her a hand. That all right?” It must have been, for she drew in a relieved breath and flashed me a thumbs-up. “Yeah, I should be back in on Monday. See you then. Thanks, James. Bye!”