Home Improvement: Undead Edition (25 page)

I couldn’t see his face much out of the corner of my eye, but it looked like a cheek muscle twitched.

“Tweed suit,” he said.

Wasn’t sure I heard him right so I yelled over the hoofbeats. “Come again, please?”

“She WENT downhill here, sir. TURN to the right, if you please. A tweed suit. Just put on a tweed suit. Especially if it’s a few decades out of date. No one suspects you of anything. I tell you, if you ever need to lie low somewhere, find yourself a secondhand tweed suit. When I must eat, I visit the hospitals and nursing homes. Someone like me, smelling like mothballs, wool hat in hand wandering around a nursing home peeking into doors—no one gives me a second look. I look for those on their last legs. Dementia, pain . . . not much vitality in their blood, of course, but I feel as if I’m doing them a service.”

“Was it always like that, or did you change over time?” I’d known a vampire or two who’d quietly starved themselves to death because the routine got to them. Talky old bloke would probably go that way.

“It was my daughter, poor creature. She’d had it all, smarts, looks. WANTED, NEEDED to keep it. Best turn left here, I think she’s down this gully.”

“Your own daughter.”

“We lost my wife early on, so it was just the two of us. I think the possibility she wouldn’t have to outlive me got in her head. She’d been away years, just a postcard here and there from various spots in Mexico or Rio. Then she came back. I SHOULD have known something was odd about her, years traipsing around Puerto Vallarta and the Caribbean, but pale as moonlight. Still, who wouldn’t hug their daughter even if there was rather too much white about the pupils.”

“How did she get into it?”

“Some young hotshot. Hardly KNEW the art himself, and here he was building a posse. That’s what he called my daughter. Part of his
posse
. Nothing so dignified as
bride
, or
mate
, or with the implied responsibility of
sister
. She was in his posse. The world and its young hotshots. Those are just the kind of customers Mason wishes to cultivate. As if they are going to be touring the Mississippi Valley, antiquing for old farm implements and rare beer bottles.”

“What ever happened to her?”

“The Templars, I think. She called me, once, said some men were after her and I MUST move and change my name. She loved the game,
the game
she called it, and played it risky. Just here—I can hear panting from those trees.”

I thought about asking if she’d ever tried his tweed suit, but even the horses I exhaust don’t deserve that much cruelty. In any case, we were almost on top of Lisa Stensgaard.

“Shall you take care of her, or shall I?” I asked.

“Must we?” Ravelston asked. He stared at the copse of hillside poplars. I couldn’t hear anything but the wind and the horse stomping, but his instincts were intact with the night at its zenith.

“It’s that, or the Templars will be burning you all out by noon the day after tomorrow.”

“Perhaps—Oh, I suppose you’re right. She’s just about the age of my daughter. Funny how the bits of human existence linger on. Like a nursery rhyme from childhood.”

“Along came a spider,” I muttered.

Wait a tick—

“Come out, my dear,” Ravelston said. “I’ll make it quick, and I GUARANTEE it’s pain free and rather pleasant. I went through it myself not so many years ago, you see.”

“No. Let me go, please. Please!” she said, stepping from the copse. Her legs were scratched by thorns, and they shook.

“Lisa,” I called. “Lisa, I know you didn’t ask for this. You didn’t ask for anything but a holiday in the sun. The only thing you did was talk to the wrong guy in a bar, I suppose. Bad break for you. But I think I can give you a choice. You can just accept that you’re a casualty of an ancient battle, or you can help us out. Maybe even get revenge against the man who imprisoned you in that tank.”

“Is this a trick?” she asked.

“More of a treat,” I said. “For us, at least.”

A WEEK LATER
the Skyline had been cleaned of the dreadful décor and refurnished with some simple Arts and Crafts chairs and tables Ravelston had found at an Amish furniture roadside shop. A new bar was on order.

Megha, working the kitchen, had the zombies in thick rubber gloves and surgical suits washing dishes and polishing glassware. The golem was chopping vegetables, working methodically from the bins.

I’d loaned her a substantial sum to pay off the Skyline’s debts. She’d proven herself an eager pupil and looked forward to her new role as chef.

The relaunch was a stunning success. Not a soul recognized pale, newly dyed-and-shorn Lisa Stensgaard as the new waitress. A delicate black choker hid the healing bite marks in her neck, and her nice eyes and cheekbones drew attention upward in any case.

Ravelston was behind the bar, pouring out aquavit—a local favorite—and anecdotes.

The menu, designed by me and executed by Megha, was a success. The special tonight was a juicehead fricassee in a New Ulm winery sauce. Some drunken college jocks had overturned their canoe on the Wisconsin River—with a bit of a nudge from Buck—and the police had managed to dredge up only one of the victims.

Even Charles Lasseur was impressed. I issued an invitation for a revisit personally, and he’d called Megha to his table to compliment her on the second-string Badger linebacker. “You’ve brought expertise back to fine dining here in the Midwest. I expect you’ll find a grateful and loyal clientele,” he said.

“Thank you,” we said in unison.

“I look forward to trying you again tomorrow. Can I assume the new management has a fresh surprise to delight the tooth?”

“You can count on it. As our guest, of course,” Megha said.

Megha knew how to stay on the old ghoul’s good side. Counting her tongue, she was making at least four obscene gestures. Five if the lascivious wink was included.

Lasseur’s lips had long since shriveled and pulled away from his gumline, but he licked where they’d once been. “Give me a hint?”

“Yes,” I said. “As a matter of fact, tomorrow night we’re serving the old management.”

Through This House

SEANAN MCGUIRE

Now until the break of day,
Through this house each fairy stray.

—WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM

“So this is Goldengreen.” May stared around herself with undisguised curiosity, taking in the high weeds choking the footpaths and the brambles that did their best to conceal the drop-off to the Pacific Ocean waiting a hundred yards or so below the cliff. Not one of California’s finer views, although at least it wasn’t raining. “It’s a fixer-upper, that’s for sure.”

“Shut up,” I snapped. I kept circling the rusted-out old shed that used to link the field behind the San Francisco Art Museum to the knowe of Goldengreen, Seat of the County it was named for. The door connecting the mortal world and the knowe had been created and maintained by the former Countess, Evening Winterrose.

Trouble was, Evening had been dead for nearly two years, and few enchantments are strong enough to last that long in the mortal world without maintenance. Goldengreen was sealed when she died. No one maintained the connections, figuring, I guess, that someday there would be a new regent, and it would be their problem.

Guess who the new Countess of Goldengreen was?

Good guess.

I gave the shed an experimental kick. It shook slightly, but that was all. No magical sparks leaped out to char my shoe, no lingering wards activated—whatever magic Evening had used here, it was long gone. I sighed, stepping back. “Come on, May. We’re going to need to try one of the other doors.”

“Awesome.” May walked over to me, beaming. “It’s an adventure.”

“Yeah,” I said dryly, and started walking toward the edge of the cliff. “That.”

A LITTLE BACKGROUND,
before this gets too confusing: My name is October Daye. I’m a changeling, which means my father was human and my mother was fae. I’m less human than I used to be, also thanks to my mother, who used blood magic to push me more toward fae in order to save my life. I’m still not sure whether to be pissed off about that.

About two years ago, Countess Evening Winterrose was murdered by my former mentor. I was the one who proved he’d done it. In the process the Queen of the Mists—current regent of Northern California—wound up in my debt. It was a position neither of us found particularly comfortable, since she thinks I’m changeling scum and I think she’s dangerously insane. As soon as she had the opportunity to discharge that debt, she did . . . by giving me the title to Goldengreen. Yippee.

I never wanted to be a Countess, and I definitely didn’t want the responsibility of reclaiming an entire fallow knowe. Faerie hills get weird when they’re untended for too long, and Goldengreen had been empty since Evening died. Unfortunately, I also had a few dozen new subjects to worry about—the former denizens of the Japanese Tea Gardens, who were left homeless when their regent, my friend Lily, was murdered. They’d been camping in the entry hall, a huge, empty space that offered neither warmth nor comfort. It was the only place in the knowe close enough to the mortal world for us to access without actually prying a door open.

Reclaiming Goldengreen wasn’t something I could afford to put off. We just had to find a way to get
inside
.

May stopped at the edge of the cliff, teetering on her tiptoes as she looked down to the rocks far below. “Whoa. That first step’s a doozy, huh?”

“Something like that. Can you take a step to the left?”

“Huh? Oh, sure.” May took an exaggerated step sideways, offering me a bright smile at the same time. “How’s that?”

“Good. Good.” To the mortal world, May’s my sister. Faerie knows her for what she really is: my Fetch, a death omen summoned into existence by my impending demise.

That was several impending demises ago. May’s been living with me since the first time I failed to die, and she makes a pretty good roommate. Best of all, being a Fetch, she possesses one trait that was about to come in extremely handy.

Fetches are indestructible.

While she was peering down at the waves beating themselves against the base of the cliff, I positioned myself behind her, checked my footing, stepped forward, and shoved. May screamed as she fell—more with surprise than actual fear—but the sound was cut off after only a few feet, when she vanished into thin air.

“I
thought
this was the back entrance,” I said, and jumped after her.

MY FALL ONLY
lasted a few seconds. Reality did a dizzying dip-and-whirl of transition as I passed from the mortal world into the Summerlands, and my feet hit the solid stone floor of Goldengreen’s main hall. May’s palm hit my cheek about five seconds later.

“A little
warning
next time?” she demanded.

I’m not fond of being slapped, but I had to allow that she’d been justified. “Would you have let me push you if I’d warned you?”

“What? No!”

“Well, that’s why you didn’t get a warning.” I waved a hand to indicate the hall around us. It was twilight-dim, saved from absolute darkness only by fae vision and the traces of a distant glow from somewhere up ahead. “We’re here. That was the goal. And what’s the worst that could have happened?”

“I could have been eaten by a giant shark swept out of its natural habitat by freak ocean currents caused by global warming.”

I let my hand drop back to my side, eyeing her. “That’s it. No more late-night horror movies for you. Come on. Let’s see if we can’t find the light switch.”

May fell into step beside me, sticking a little closer than was strictly necessary as we walked along the darkened hall. I couldn’t exactly blame her. The air had a sepulchral quality to it, like we were walking into a tomb that had been sealed since time began. Even our footsteps failed to echo, dampened and deadened by the shadows pressing in around us. In Faerie, the regent is the land. By leaving Goldengreen untended, the Queen had left the land without a regent . . . and that’s never good.

“It’s like we’re in a big zombie movie,” said May.

I glared. “I was trying really hard not to have that thought.”

Her smile was visible even through the gloom. “That’s what I’m here for.”

I started walking a little faster, making May hurry to keep up. She snickered as she quickened her pace.

“Oh, c’mon, Toby. If you just watched a few more horror movies—” The hall shifted around us.

It wasn’t a big shift—just enough to knock me off balance, sending me stumbling into May, who caught me easily. She looks like a changeling, but she’s a pureblooded Fetch, and her balance is much better than mine.

“What was that?” she demanded.

“Oh,
now
you’re not making jokes?” I straightened, tilting my head toward the join of wall and ceiling as I snapped, “Cut that out! I am the new Countess of Goldengreen, and I’m here by right of Crown and Claiming.”

Maybe that wasn’t such a good idea.

The hall shuddered, for all the world like a dog trying to shake something off its back. This time, May and I both staggered backward, stopping only when we hit the wall. Doors were slamming deeper in the knowe, and dust and cobwebs were beginning to rain down from the rafters. Unlike the first shift, this one showed no sign of stopping—although it
did
show signs of getting worse. If we didn’t move, the knowe was going to bring itself down around our ears.

Being buried alive didn’t sound like a great idea, and with Lily’s subjects camped in the entry hall, I couldn’t take the risk that the entire knowe would fall in. The Queen might approve—it would take out a lot of troublesome riffraff in one “regrettable accident”—but I certainly wouldn’t. I didn’t know why the knowe was objecting to us and not to them. That was something to worry about later.

I grabbed May’s arm. “I’ve learned something from horror movies, too.”

“What’s that?” she asked, raising her voice to be heard above the shaking.

“When the house tells you to get out, you
get out
!” I took off running, hauling her in my wake and banking on the exits being easier to find than the entrances were. The knowe continued to shake around us, more and more detritus showering down from the ceiling, the few remaining furnishings and ornaments toppling to the floor. Then a door was in front of us, and I hit it shoulder first, sending us both into the cool night air of the mortal world. We went sprawling, May in a patch of ornamental ground cover, me into a sign that identified our location as the San Francisco Art Museum garden.

The door swung shut behind us, but not before I saw the knowe stop shaking.

May sat up, beaming as she brushed her hair away from her face. “That was awesome! What now?”

I groaned, sagging backward against the sign. “I have no idea.”

MY ALLIES ARE
a motley bunch, defined more by their stubborn refusal to stand back and let the professionals deal with things than any other characteristic. Danny showed up half an hour after I called, his cab roaring into the parking lot at a speed that would have been suicidal for most people. With Danny behind the wheel, it was just stupid.

He parked sideways across three parking spots before climbing out of the car, a process that took longer than would have been necessary for almost anybody else. Danny is a Bridge Troll—basically eight feet of mountain that walks like a man, with skin like concrete and hands large enough to wrap around a grown man’s head. He wasn’t bothering with a human disguise, probably because it was almost two o’clock in the morning, and stood revealed in all his craggy, gray-skinned glory. He would have looked right at home guarding the gate at a Renaissance faire, if not for the blue jeans and size 5X San Francisco Giants sweatshirt.

“Tobes!” he declared jubilantly, spreading his arms in greeting. “An’ May! How’s it going, girl?”

“Pretty good,” said May, walking over to hug him. “Jazz sends her love. She’s off with the flock this weekend. Something about the annual migration.”

“That’s, uh . . . that’s special.”

May grinned. “You get used to it once you’ve been dating a bird for a little while.”

The two of them continued exchanging pleasantries as I walked around Danny’s car and peered in the passenger-side window. The bronze-haired teenage Daoine Sidhe sitting in the front seat with a Barghest sprawled halfway across his lap offered me a timid smile. I knocked on the window.

Quentin obligingly rolled it down. “Hi, Toby.”

“Don’t you ‘Hi, Toby’ me. What are you doing here?”

“Danny said he was coming over, and I asked if he’d bring me along.”

There were so many issues with that sentence that I barely knew where to start. I settled for asking, “Why were you with Danny to know that he was coming over?”

“He picked me up from the Luidaeg’s.”

I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Do I want to know why you were at the Luidaeg’s?”

“Just visiting.”

It’s a sign of how much time Quentin has spent with me that the idea of “just visiting” the Luidaeg didn’t seem to strike him as odd. Most people refer to the Luidaeg by her title: the Sea Witch. She’s Firstborn, almost as old as Faerie itself, and tends to be viewed as one of the bogeymen under our collective bed. No one “just visits” her. No one but me, and now, apparently, Quentin.

Quentin and the Luidaeg met when his human girlfriend was kidnapped by Blind Michael and transformed into a horse to serve his unending Ride. We got the girlfriend back, Blind Michael’s Ride was stopped for good, and Quentin wound up forming a personal relationship with one of Faerie’s greatest monsters. Nobody can say our friendship hasn’t been educational for him. I just hope his parents—whoever they are—will agree. Quentin is a blind foster at Shadowed Hills, which means I don’t know where he’s from, beyond “somewhere in Canada.”

If he doesn’t come from a really liberal family, I am eventually going to have to do some serious explaining.

“Get out of the car,” I said, dropping my hand. “You’re here. You may as well make yourself useful.”

Quentin grinned, scrambling to open the door. Danny’s Barghests poured out before Quentin had his seat belt undone, swarming around my feet making the weird yodeling noises that passed as their happy-to-see-you bark. I took a step backward, trying to maintain my balance. “Danny!”

“Aw, heck, sorry about that,” said Danny, and planted two enormous fingers in his mouth, giving an earsplitting whistle. I winced, waiting for the museum security guards to put in an appearance.

Luck was with us for a change; no guards appeared as the Barghests stopped circling my ankles and went racing over to dance around Danny, scorpion tails wagging in wild delight. There were only three of them, if
only
is the appropriate word when talking about corgi-sized semicanine monsters with venomous stings and retractable claws. Danny runs a Barghest rescue service, and they tend to go everywhere with him when he’s not driving mortal clientele. I don’t think he’s ever managed to adopt one out. I also don’t think he cares.

I shook my head. “Which ones are these?”

“Iggy, Lou, an’ Daisy,” Danny said proudly, bending down to pet his venomous charges, who yodeled more in their delight. “Daisy’s the smart one. She figured out how to open the door on the mail truck. You shoulda seen the mailman’s face.”

That was another line of thought I didn’t really feel like pursuing. I shook my head. “Okay, great. Come on. We need to find a way to get into Goldengreen without the knowe deciding to kill us all.”

“Sounds like fun to me,” said Danny, and grinned, showing a mouthful of teeth like broken concrete.

“Wish I shared the sentiment,” I said, and started down the path toward the cliffside entrance.