Jack, the giant-killer (16 page)

“Then what’ll stop them?”

“The death of Cormoran for the time being. That will leave them without orders. They’ll follow us, I think—the two that are still mounted, the third if his machine was not too badly damaged—but I doubt they’ll do more for now.”

He was stroking Jacky’s head, comforting her as he spoke. Jacky’s shirt was a bunched-up ball in her hands.

“Who are you?” Kate asked.

“My name’s Eilian. Your friend rescued me from the Unseelie Court.”

Kate shook her head, her lips forming a soundless

“wow.”
Her
Jacky had done all this? She reached through to the back seat, adding her own comfort to what Eilian offered, even if it was just a pat on the knee.

“Maybe you should get her shirt on,” she said. Through the rear window she could see two of the Hunt following. “If we want to get into a restaurant, it’d help.”

Understatement of the week. The way they all looked, she wondered where they’d all get into. And why wasn’t Jacky wearing her shirt? She probably shouldn’t even ask. There was so much going on that she felt left behind while everything spun past her in a dizzying whirl.

They were over Lansdowne Bridge again, past Sunnyside, going down the long hill that Bank Street made before it crossed the Rideau River at Billings Bridge. This was an odd strip—antique stores and bookshops side by side with bicycle and auto repair stores. Hillary’s Cleaners came up on the left. The South Garden—a Chinese restaurant—was on the right, but it was too quiet.

“There!” Kate cried, but Arkan was already pulling into the parking lot.

It was a Dairy Queen. Lit up. Huge glass windows so that you could see all around. And even this late in October, it had lots of people in it. Kate leaned over the back seat as Arkan parked the car. Jacky sat up and squirmed into her shirt, looking the worse for wear with her rumpled clothes and the wild stubble of her hair. But she seemed to have a grip on herself again. A small smile touched her lips.

“Let’s all go to the Dairy Queen,” she sang quietly to the tune of its familiar advertisements.

“You ass,” Kate said, but she could have kissed her. She opened the door on her side and stepped out nervously. She looked around once, twice, then spotted the two black riders sitting on their Harleys in the lot of the gas station across the street. Arkan looked at her from over the roof of the car.

“Are you sure we’ll be okay here?” she asked him. Arkan shook his head. “No. But what else can we do?”

Good question, Kate thought. She stood aside as Eilian and Jacky disembarked, then led the way into the restaurant.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

« ^ »

Jacky and Kate brought each other up-to-date over burgers, fries, and thick milkshakes. They interrupted each other constantly with “You didn’t!”s and “I would’ve died”s, much to the amusement of their faerie companions.

Hilarity sparked between them and Kate thought about what Arkan had said about how Faerie effected mortals who strayed into it. She worried, remembering snatches of old tales telling of poets driven mad by faerie queens and the like, but it was too hard to remain sensible with the way Jacky was carrying on and the giddiness that continued to bubble up inside herself.

There’d been no need to worry about how they looked. The mid-evening Dairy Queen crowd, while not quite as scruffy as the four of them, were hardly fashionable. Polyester and jeans were the order of the day. One man in green and yellow plaid trousers, mismatched with a red and blue striped windbreaker, set them all off again.

Double-dating at the DQ, Kate thought as she looked in the window and caught the reflection of the four of them in their booth. Then she saw the third rider pull up in the parking lot across the street. He put his machine on its kickstand beside the other two bikes, then walked over to where his companions stood under a billboard advertising Daniel Hechter sweatshirts.

What struck Kate first and foremost was that she wasn’t wearing the redcap at the moment. It was sitting on the table beside the wrappers of the two burgers that she’d devoured.

“How come I can see them?” she asked, interrupting Jacky in the middle of explaining why she’d been standing with her shirt in her hand when they’d picked her up. “The riders,” she added at the general collection of blank looks her question gathered. “I can see all three of them and I’m not wearing the cap.”

“Each time you see into Faerie it becomes easier,”

Arkan said. “Not for all, mind, and quicker for some than for others. You see us don’t you?”

“Yes, but—”

“Think of it as a painting that you’ve had for years. A nice landscape, perhaps. One day someone comes in and says, ‘Look at that face in the side of the hill,’ and from then on you’ll always be aware of that face. Because you’ll
know
it’s there.”

“It’s that simple?”

“No,” Arkan replied with a grin. “It’s faerie magic.”

Kate aimed a kick at him under the table, but missed.

“What’re we going to do about them?” Jacky asked, indicating the riders with a nod of her head. “We won’t be able to do anything with them following us around.”

“We must lose them,” Eilian said.

Arkan shook his head. “Easy to say, but impossible to do.”

“The Gruagagh would know a way,” Jacky said.

“But he told you not to go back.”

“That was before, Kate. He was afraid they’d get my scent or something. Well, they’ve got it now, so what harm would there be in going to ask him for advice?”

“One does not go lightly against the wishes of a gruagagh,” Eilian said.

“We’re not really going to do that,” Jacky insisted.

“It’s just that things have changed. Nothing’s the same anymore. We can’t go sneaking into the Giants’ Keep, because with the Hunt following us we might as well just step right up and ring the front doorbell. We need a trick to get by them and the Gruagagh’s the one to give it to us.”

“We do need something,” Eilian agreed.

“How did you know about Jacky?” Kate asked the Laird of Dunlogan’s son, speaking as the thought came to her. “What brought you here looking for her?”

They all looked at him and even Jacky saw him as though for the first time. There was a look about him that set him a cut above the common. His hair was the black of the feathers she remembered, his eyes darker still. A Laird’s son was like a prince, wasn’t he? Eilian smiled as though reading her thoughts. Unfortunately, Jacky told herself, by that reckoning, the only princess around here was Lorana. Rescuing her could make this whole thing into a regular fairy tale.

“There is a story told in Dunlogan,” Eilian said,

“that was told before this time of trouble began. It foretold the fading of Faerie, both in Dunlogan and Kinrowan and all the new haunts of our people here in Liomauch Og; warned as well of how the Host would grow stronger in turn. When that time came, there a new Jack would arrive in one of the Seelie Courts, come to cast down the giants as the Jacks have of old.”

“I’m not a Jack,” Jacky said. “I’m a girl.”

Eilian nodded. “Most assuredly, yet the spirits of the Jacks of old is in you. It’s a lucky name—as the tales that your people still tell can vouch for.”

“I’ve heard that before,” Arkan said. “But where do you fit in?”

“I’m the third son of a third son of—”

“A third son,” Arkan finished. “I see.”

“Well, I don’t,” Kate said.

“It’s like in the stories, isn’t it?” Jacky asked. Eilian nodded again. “The histories of Faerie tend to repeat themselves as much as your own do.”

“You see,” Jacky said, turning to Kate to explain it.

“It’s always the youngest son—not the eldest or the middle, but the third, the youngest son, that wins through in the end. It’s in all the stories.”

“Why?”

“Oh, Kate. I don’t know. Because that’s the way it works.”

“But this isn’t a story.”

“It might as well be one.” Jacky grinned. “Hobs and giants and bogans and all. It makes me feel lightheaded.”

“I shouldn’t wonder. You’ve lost about ten pounds of hair.”

Jacky turned to her reflection, lifting a hand to the blonde stubble. “Oh, God! Look at me! I’d forgotten how terrible I looked.”

“That’s the least of our problems,” Kate said.

“That’s easy for you to say.”

“I just did.”

Jacky tried out a fierce look on Kate but couldn’t hold it. The two erupted in laughter leaving Eilian and Arkan shaking their heads. Arkan turned to the Laird’s son.

“I think it’s something about the air of Faerie,” he said. “Even in a place like this.”

“Either that,” Eilian said, “or mortals
are
all mad.”

Jacky finally caught her breath. “You were saying?”

she prompted.

“Times have been bad,” Eilian said after a moment or two, “and getting worse. When word came north of how Gyre the Elder was moving his Court into Kinrowan, our Billy Blind said it was time now for me to go and help as I could. Three knots he tied in my hair, one for each—

“What’s a Billy Blind?” Jacky asked, interrupting. Arkan replied. “It’s a custom we brought with us from the old country. Every Court has one—a man or woman who has been crippled or blinded. They can often see into the days to come and the old magics run strong in them—as recompense, some say. Even your folk had them in the old days.”

Jacky’s mouth shaped a small “O.” Then she turned to Eilian. “And he tied knots in your hair?”

Eilian nodded. “One for each mortal danger I must face. Here, look.” He turned his head so that Jacky could see two small braided knots of hair that hung behind his right ear.

“There’s only two.”

Eilian nodded again, adding a smile. “That’s because one’s come undone—after you rescued me from the Unseelie Court this evening.”

“You mean you’ve got to go through that two more times?”

“That… or something like it.”

“Oh.” The prospect wasn’t very pleasing to Jacky.

“Well, at least you know you’ll be okay, won’t you? I mean, something’ll happen, and you’ll pull through until both those knots are gone as well—right?”

“It’s not that assured, unfortunately,” Eilian replied.

“It’s usually that way with augurings,” Arkan added.

“Easy for you to say,” Kate said, “seeing how you don’t have knots in your hair.”

Arkan smiled. “How do you know what I do or do not have in my hair?”

“The thing we’ve got to do,” Jacky said, “is get out of here.” She didn’t like all this talk about hair and who had what in theirs. “I say we make our way to the Gruagagh’s Tower and stay there tonight, then head out for Calabogie first thing in the morning.”

“And the Hunt?” Arkan asked.

“I’ve got a plan.”

Kate looked at Jacky and shook her head. “I don’t think I’m going to like this at all,” she said. Over Kate’s protests, Jacky took her jacket and went to the washroom. Moments later the door opened and Kate saw her friend come out, but knew that no one else would, for she was wearing the blue jacket now, with its hob-spelled stitcheries. She frowned at Arkan and Eilian, neither of whom had objected to Jacky’s plan because they were both enamoured with the fact that she was “the Jack, after all. She killed a giant, didn’t she?”

Jacky waited by the door until a customer was leaving, then winked at Kate and slipped out behind him. It took all of Kate’s willpower not to stare out the window and watch Jacky’s progress. Jacky might be invisible to the Hunt, but if Kate and her two faerie companions had their noses pressed up to the window, the riders would soon know that something was up. Count to a hundred, Jacky had said. Staring daggers at the two faerie in the booth with her who had let Jacky go through with her plan, Kate began to count. Once she was outside, Jacky’s confidence, fueled by Eilian and Arkan’s admiring agreement to her plan, began to falter. There were too many shadows around her. The wind rustled leaves and the odd bit of refuse up and down the street, effectively swallowing any tell-tale sounds that might have warned her of approaching bogans and the like.

A car pulled into the Dairy Queen’s parking lot, almost running her down. She was about to shout something at the foolidiotjerk, then realized that the poor sod behind the wheel couldn’t have seen her. Not with the jacket on. She glanced back at the restaurant where Kate and the others were playing their part. Then, biting at her lower lip, she faced the three riders of the Hunt across the street from her.

This, she realized, might not be one of her brightest ideas. But it was too late to back out now. They had to do something. It was that, or dawdle around the old DQ until the place closed and they were kicked out. By then who knew how many of the Unseelie Court would be skulking around, looking for tasty mortals to gnaw on.

She shivered, remembering her helplessness in the Civic Centre. But you got away, she told herself. And you did kill a giant. They’ll be scared of
you
now. Right. Sure.

She started across the street.

Fifty-five, fifty-six.

Surely she could dare a peek?

Fifty-seven, fifty-eight.

Kate’s nerves were all jangling. She should have insisted that she be the one to go out. At least then she wouldn’t be stuck inside here worrying.

Sixty, sixty-one.

She glanced casually out the window, saw Jacky starting across the street, then just as casually stretched and looked back at her companions.

“I wonder what’s taking her so long in there,” she said to Arkan who obligingly turned and looked at the door to the washroom.

Sixty-nine, seventy.

He shrugged as he looked back at her. “Maybe she’s looking for knots in her hair,” he said.

Eilian and Kate laughed.

Seventy-four.

Kate wondered if Eilian’s laugh sounded as hollow to him as hers did to her.

Seventy-six.

If I was a Huntsman, she thought, I’d
know
something was up, just by the way we’re all sitting in this booth like a bunch of geeks.

Eighty, eighty-one.

As she passed by the Hunt, Jacky was tempted to grab something and whack one of them over the head, but all she did was go by as softly as she could, positive that they could hear her knees rattling against each other, her teeth chattering, her pulse drumming out: “HereIam, hereIam!” And then, just when she was as close to them as her path would take her, one of them lifted his head and looked around himself uneasily.