Faerie Blood (27 page)

Then I drifted off again, with the red fleece blanket wrapped around my body and the soft brush of Christopher’s voice wrapped around my ears. Time blurred, and it seemed only moments later when I heard the phone ringing—and his voice again.

“Kendis. Wake up.” His big hand gently shook my shoulder. “We’ve got Millie on the phone.”

“I’m awake, I’m awake…” Groggily I stirred, jolting Fortissimo, who’d stretched out atop my side and was purring up a storm, his forepaws draped over my shoulder, his rear ones digging into my hip. Fort mewled and jumped down to the floor while I blinked up at Christopher. Jude stood just behind him, worried of eye and furrowed of brow. “Where is she? Is she okay?”

By way of reply, the young Warder held out my phone. I snatched it, anxious to hear Millie’s voice. “Millie, this is Kendis, where are you?”

“Renton,” Millicent answered, with what would have been her usual vigor if she weren’t speaking in a breathy whisper. “I’m in the ER down here.” I cried out at that, but she went on without stopping, “Send Jude down here to get me pronto. I can’t stay off Seattle ground much longer.”

“We’ll be right down—”

“You stay put, girlie, you hear me?” Volume only added to the raggedness of Millie’s voice. “No matter what’s happened to me, you’re still in danger. The boy’s told me he Warded your house, so don’t you set one foot outside it till I get back up there. And he stays with you!”

Fear struck me at the idea of sending my friend off by herself, even if it was to fetch Millicent, but I fought to keep from snapping at the old woman. The weakness in her voice disturbed me greatly; what in the world had happened to her? “But Jude shouldn’t go out alone.”

“Don’t argue with me!” Somewhere behind Millicent’s waspish retort, I heard another voice saying something sternly admonishing. It might have been a doctor or a nurse, for Millie barked, “For God’s sake, sonny, stop hovering! I damned well know what I need, and you ain’t in a position to provide it!” Then she added to me, with just enough desperation to alarm me even more, “Get Jude down here! Now!”

Then she hung up, leaving me with a dial tone and Christopher and Jude’s concerned faces. “She’s in Renton in the ER,” I told them. “She says for Jude to come get her—and Christopher and me to stay.”

“No!” Christopher insisted, looking as horrified by the idea as I felt.

“On it,” Jude pronounced at the same time. She whirled to fetch her shoes and her keys, and I had to jump after her to stop her. But she whipped up a hand and thrust it against my chest to stop me first. “Ken, babe, don’t even start. Millie said that you need to keep a low profile, and hey, I may be clueless about all this magic stuff, but I happen to think she’s right. I’m not the one the Sidhe want. You are.”

“We can’t let you go out unprotected!” I cried.

“Who said anything about unprotected?” Jude turned to the flabbergasted Christopher. “Yo, you’re official now. Magic me up like you did Kendis.”

Understanding rolled across Christopher’s face at the same time it hit me. “Hold that thought,” I said, lifting a hand for a pause and then rushing off down the hall to my bedroom. Fortissimo indolently looked up from grooming himself amidst the rumpled quilt and sheets on my unmade bed as I bolted for the jewelry box sitting on top of my dresser. It took only seconds to find what I wanted, a circular pendant painted with a vividly hued image of the Yoruba goddess Yemoja set on a woven cord of blue, green, and gold. Returning to the others, I held it out and proclaimed in satisfaction, “Put the Ward on this.”

For a moment I thought Jude might balk; her eyes went wide, and then very full. “Your favorite pendant,” she murmured.

“A gift freely given.” I smiled at her. “Seems only fair.”

This time the Warding went far more easily. Once Jude had the Yemoja pendant on, Christopher cupped it in one hand and simply
looked
at it for a few seconds. My magic flickered awake in response to his, as though eager to unite with it once more. But that thought made me blush, and so I stood back and let him do his work.

“That should do it,” he said when he was done. His eyes were warm with the same wonder he’d shown the night before; I smiled at the sight of it.

“Bitchin’,” said Jude. She’d put on her shoes while I was in the bedroom. Now she squared her shoulders and flashed Christopher and me an impish salute. “Ensign Expendable, departing as ordered. Too bad I don’t have a red shirt with me.”

I stepped over to hug her. “Be careful, okay?”

“They want me, they’ll have to catch me,” Jude said, hugging me back. Then, with a sidelong glance at Christopher, she leaned over to whisper in my ear, “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!” I blinked and spluttered, but before I could think of a comeback she scampered out the door. “See ya!”

Left with nothing to do but close the door behind her, I did just that. And I turned around to Christopher, blushing furiously and wondering if he’d caught that little whisper. He had. His cheeks were bright red, his expression pure mortification; he stared at me as though he’d never seen me before. I scrambled to say something light and witty, but he spoke first. And what he said surprised me.

“You might want to take a peek in the mirror.”

I looked up at him without comprehension—then the clue switch flipped on. Dread, nervousness, and anticipation all winged through my system, propelling my dash to the bathroom. In through the open door, flick of the light switch, and then it was time for another episode of Weird Reflections in the Mirror Theater. I sucked in a breath, stared, and wondered when I’d escaped out from under the cardboard box a small blond boy and a stuffed tiger had labeled ‘Elf’.

My face was still recognizably my own. But to go along with my yellow eyes, something subtle had altered the structure of the bones beneath my skin, making my features seem more delicate without changing them in any obvious way. My hair still frizzed in its wild mass around my face, brow, and shoulders, but with a new reddish sheen, as though someone had hennaed it in my sleep or tempered the raw umber of my untidy curls in flame.

Swallowing hard, I lifted up my hair and turned my head left and right to see my ears. They weren’t pointed like my mother’s, or Elessir’s, or those of the three Seelie who’d been led by my uncle. But the tops of them bore a distinct angle now, definitely points in progress.

I stood there and stared, unsure of what I saw.

Or rather, what it meant, for what I looked like was not really the point. Tapered ears and citrine eyes were only the outward trappings of the new dimension to the world—to me—that I’d discovered on the Burke-Gilman trail. Millicent had said the magic in my blood might change me, but that if I set my mind to it, I could choose which path the power roiling through me would take, what shape it would finally give me.

So what did I want?

Slowly I reached up to rub my fingers across the wolf’s head pendant. It warmed at my contact, which felt comforting, like friendship or Aggie’s quilts. This was it, I thought, evidence that magic didn’t have to be frightening or destructive, that it could cause good things along with harm. If it was to be a part of me, I wanted that hope. It made me feel less like a tornado-level accident waiting to happen.

I thought of Warding the house with Christopher, and smiled.

A movement in the corner of my eye and the faint scuff of his socks on the floor told me he’d come to the bathroom door. He didn’t say anything, but rather just waited and watched me with patient, knowing eyes.

After a few moments more I asked, my voice small, “It doesn’t bother you? I mean, that I’m… fey?” I turned to look up at him. My aunt had known since I was born and had raised and loved me as her own child. Millicent seemed old and worldly enough that I doubted anything would trouble her, and though I knew all the revelations about me were unsettling Jude, she was going out of her way to treat me the same as she always had. For that, I was grateful beyond words.

I had known Christopher for only two and a half days; he should have been a stranger to me. And yet, he wasn’t. Something in me had known him on a fundamental level from the first time I’d felt that prickling current flowing between us—from the moment his blood had touched my skin and the magic awakening in both of us had intertwined. That same something was certain, deep within my blood and bone, that I would not scare him away.

But, I realized, I still needed to hear him say it. Ironically that helped somehow; it made me feel more like
me
.

He shook his head and said simply, “No, lass.”

“Good,” I said, while a warm glow of pleasure blossomed in my chest. “See, I’m getting used to having you around, but I need more time to really get the hang of it, you know?”

Christopher smiled. “We’ve got time right now,” he noted, ducking his gaze and then bringing it back up again. It made him look almost shy. But interest and anticipation, not shyness, gleamed in his eyes.

And I beamed at him for it. “Yeah. So! What say you show me your bouzouki?”

We sat down with one another on the living room couch, Fort prowling curiously around our feet, while Christopher unzipped the bag he’d brought from his boarding house and drew forth the instrument within it. His hands seemed almost too large for such a delicate-looking thing, but with the deft ease of long practice, he settled it into place on his lap and struck a chord upon the strings. Steel and bronze chimed in a voice a bit too high and bright for a guitar, too full for a banjo. For several seconds afterward the notes lingered, as though the very air of the room sang backup.

And the bouzouki itself was gorgeous. Four pairs of strings ran across widely spaced frets down its long, slender mahogany neck to a fat teardrop-shaped body that could have been rosewood or cherry, its natural hues undimmed by varnish or finish. The texture of engraving set into the ebony of its head caught my eye, though I had to look closer to make out an elaborate Celtic knot surrounding a phrase in an unfamiliar language:
Airson mo mhac Crìsdean
.

Curious, I gestured at the words. “What’s that say?”

Christopher did not exactly frown; the tension that had haunted him before did not return. But his gaze turned pensive as he brushed a finger along the bouzouki’s bottommost, thinnest pair of strings, making a faint sliding noise that segued into a whisper of an E. “It’s Gaelic,” he said, so faintly that I marveled that I heard it; it was as if he were speaking from another room, or another time. “Scots Gaelic. It says ‘for my son Christopher’.” He looked over at me then, his direct stare peculiarly more defenseless than his looking away would have been. “Mum was a luthier as well as a Warder. She made this instrument for me for the last of my birthdays she saw.”

Oh Jesus. I went very still, watching Christopher closely for some cue about how I could reply. For sixteen years the fate of Damhnait MacSimidh had remained a mystery; was her son about to tell me now what he’d never shared with his own kin?

“What happened to her, Christopher?” I murmured.

He didn’t duck the question, though his gaze slid down to the engraving on the ebony and stayed there.

“An Unseelie came to St. John’s,” he said in a whisper like sandstone crumbling beneath the onslaught of ocean waves. “He found my mother. And wanted her. She refused him. They fought. He won.” He paused and closed his eyes, then opened them again and stared out across the room, abruptly looking very, very young. “I was there when it happened.”

It was a sparse, bare recitation, oddly devoid of pain or grief or even much detail—but Christopher’s raw expression alone filled in many of those blanks. “An Unseelie. No wonder you lost it at Elessir’s little proposal.”

“I did,” he agreed, swinging his gaze back to me. “I’m sorry. My past days don’t excuse me bein’ a lout. But that fey bastard said what he did—and I saw red. All I could think of was Mum.”

“And me.” I scooted a little closer on the couch so that I could touch his shoulder, since his hands still busied themselves with the bouzouki. Fragments of slow, plaintive melody wafted up off the strings, a background murmur to our voices. “You didn’t want him touching me. Thank you for that.”

“I couldn’t keep him away, lass,” Christopher whispered, and I knew he wasn’t talking about Elessir.

Neither was I. “You did what you could.” I didn’t need to know precisely what had happened in St. John’s to guess that the boy had done then what I’d seen the grown man do several times already: stand up and put himself at risk to defend another.

Emotions roiled so thickly in Christopher’s eyes that I could almost see them, like ripples in a pair of hazel pools. He muted the bouzouki’s strings and shifted the instrument, turning its neck upward and resting it against his shoulder, gently, as though he held a child. “You’re braver than I am, Kendis Thompson,” he said as the notes he’d played died away into silence. “In just two scant days, I’ve seen you be braver than I’ve been in sixteen years. I should thank you. Facin’ what’s in your blood made me think it was high time I should face up to what’s in mine.”

“I’m glad you did,” I said. “But why didn’t you tell someone what happened? How old were you?”

Christopher heaved a deep sigh, and as if it somehow helped him speak of these things, he plucked another soft smattering of notes upon his instrument. “Da made me swear not to,” he admitted. “He wasn’t ever the same, after. Thought he had to take me away to keep me safe, and that meant from everythin’ and everybody, and keepin’ on the move. ’Course I went with him.” He shrugged a little, as if to ask what else he might have done. “I was just sixteen. And he was my Da.

“We went through Halifax, Toronto, and Montreal before I was eighteen. But Da took to drinkin’, and when we got to Winnipeg, he couldn’t hold a job—not that either of us got good work as long as we were movin’ so much. We had a row about it, and about Mum.” The strings jangled; Christopher’s hands shook. “He threw me out of our rented rooms, and that was the last I saw of him. Funny thing was, by then I had the taste for movin’. So I kept goin’, on to Chicago and South Dakota and every state between South Dakota and here since. I haven’t lived in the same city for two years runnin’ since Mum died. Been afraid the Warder blood would rise in me and I’d share her fate.”