Matchbox Girls (32 page)

“So you’re saying that you didn’t
want
to snatch the girls, but you had
orders
.”

“Marley—” said Corbin. “The Covenant has restricted them for thousands of years. It’s not something they can just opt out of.”

“No. Is Ettoriel here, giving orders? This asshole has apparently been creatively resisting him for days, going by my dreams and his ridiculous little alter ego.” She glared at Tarn. “Oh, yes, I understand those now, you trying so hard to circumvent his orders. But when you lured me in here by kidnapping my friends, there was no inventive avoidance. You snatched them away without a hint of warning and you
gave
them to
him
and then you started getting
creative
. I bet he was surprised when you handed them over, wasn’t he?”

“But so, so pleased,” said Tarn, looking at her with liquid eyes. His body was still tense and quivering, like a plucked guitar string.

She turned away. “Yeah. I don’t know what you’re doing, but you’re not on my side. Give me back my friends.”

“Your Penny, who is channeling Ettoriel, feeding him with her love, is not here. He took her with him when he took possession of the children.”

“Why?” Marley demanded. But even as she asked, she remembered,
My loyal servants will not be lost while I yet endure.

“He regrets what has been done to her, I believe. Maybe he doesn’t want her to burn out alone. I really have no idea. He demanded her and I obeyed.”

Marley took a deep breath. “And Branwyn?”

Tarn gave her a smile that made her shiver. “She is in quarters here in Underlight. I would open a passage for you to her, but you have me pinioned.”

“Marley,” said Corbin urgently. “Is he fighting you? How long can you maintain whatever you’re doing? You don’t have a power source, do you?”

She glanced at his anxious face, but Tarn spoke before she could. “Why would I fight? When her binding ends, another binding far more distasteful begins.”

“And yet you’d still open a passage to Branwyn? Or was that just empty words?”

Tarn’s eyelashes fluttered down. He breathed deeply and then said, “Yes. The angel doesn’t care about Branwyn. I took her for my own purposes. As long as I’m not releasing you, the compulsion of the Covenant is uninvoked.”

Marley assessed herself. She was so tired, but whatever power the shield drew on seemed untouched by physical and emotional fatigue. She was nauseous, of course—but that could just be physical exhaustion. She wasn’t
injured
like she was when the twins’ metal nightmare was too much for her protection around AT. Her shoulder and arm burned, remembering it, but the skin had never been broken. She had a gash on her arm, but it was shallow. She was
fine.
And she felt like she could bring the shield back up again. All she had to do was look at Tarn the right way.

“Do it,” she said. “Open the passage to Branwyn.” And she dropped the shield.

Tarn’s reaction was immediate, and so abrupt she almost brought the shield back up again. He spread his arms and lifted his head, then sighed explosively, as if he’d just been punched in the gut. Then he turned, calling, “Branwyn,” in a tone of voice Marley didn’t like at all.

Beside his throne, a curtain twitched aside. Beyond was a short hallway, leading to a heavy door. “Go and bring her forth, if you wish,” Tarn breathed.

“I’ll go,” said Corbin. “You stay here and watch him.”

“I’m not sure that’s—” Marley began, but Corbin had already started limping down the hall. He opened the door.

There was a pause, and then a familiar voice shouted, “You! I don’t care if
you’re
real.”

-thirty-four-

“
S
hit!” said Corbin, ducking as something long and metallic scythed through the air where his head had been. He backed up and tripped over his own feet, catching himself on one hand and turning a sprawl into another dodge as the metal cylinder smashed into where his leg should have been.

“Branwyn,” called Marley.

Branwyn stepped into the hall and met her gaze, eyes blazing. “They wouldn’t dare copy you, would they? What’s going on? Is that little winged freak around? I swear I’m going to club
someone
if I don’t get some truth.” She glanced down at Corbin, who was moving backward steadily while remaining below her eye level.

“I see you’re with this scum now, just like the pixie said.”

Marley involuntarily glanced at Tarn, who seemed delighted by Branwyn’s aggression. “Branwyn, I don’t know what he told you, but he’s been lying to me, so I think maybe he’s been lying to you, too. He’s right over here, grinning.”

Corbin escaped the hall and straightened up again, moving closer to Marley. “Are you sure this is your friend? And not another trap?”

“Oh yeah,” Marley assured him. There was a reason Branwyn had been Action Girl. Only she would start a conversation with a baseball bat.

“I don’t know. You clearly know something about all this crap, and you weren’t telling me, just like he said,” said Branwyn. She moved out of the hall and looked around. Her gaze lingered on Tarn. Marley bit her lip, and then wrapped Tarn up in her shield again. She didn’t trust him. She
couldn’t
trust him; he’d all but told her that.

He grunted and twitched, but his smile didn’t fade. “My lady,” he said, raising his eyebrows at Branwyn.

“I’m not your anything,” snapped Branwyn. “You’re the pixie? All grown up?” She tapped the cylinder against her hand thoughtfully. It wasn’t actually a baseball bat, but an ornate silver and black rod. The ornamentation bore all the signs of Branwyn’s style, and Marley wondered if she’d spent her captivity crafting a weapon. Had Tarn actually given her the materials to do that? This place was so strange, she couldn’t even guess.

Tarn inclined his head. “All grown up.”

“I wonder if it’s true that faeries don’t like iron,” she said and prodded her rod in his direction.

“You’ll have to wait until another time to find out, my lady,” said Tarn. “Go, speak with your friend. She’s worked hard to liberate you from your, ah, studio.”

Branwyn gave Tarn a scornful look and turned toward Marley. She wouldn’t quite look at Marley, though, her gaze roaming around the room. “Where did the little girls go?”

“Gone,” said Marley bleakly. “Stolen.”

“Your new friends weren’t very helpful, then,” said Branwyn, and gave Corbin a nasty look.

“No,” said Corbin quietly. “I wasn’t.”

Marley moved so that Branwyn was looking at her instead of Corbin. “Branwyn, I’m sorry.”

“Sorry for what? Sorry for trusting strangers more than your best friend? Sorry for excluding me from the most exciting thing in your life? Sorry for leaving Penny and me when you knew she had something
horrible
wrong with her? Are you going to apologize to Penny, too?”

That, finally, was too much for Marley. A sob ripped its way out of her throat, and she scrubbed her palms at her eyes.

Everybody stared at her. Then Branwyn muttered, “Aw, shit,” and moved closer.

“I can’t save her, Branwyn. I’ve tried and tried, but she’s found this thing and she... she loves it. It fills her up inside, and she doesn’t care that it’s hurting her, and she doesn’t care that it’s taking her away from us. And I couldn’t save AT and I couldn’t even keep the kids safe—”

Then Branwyn’s arms were around her and she pressed her head against her friend’s shoulder. “I didn’t know how to tell you. I didn’t even know what was going on myself.”

“Do you now?” asked Branwyn quietly, loosening her embrace to look at her.

“Mostly.” Marley lifted her head and wiped her eyes.

She realized suddenly that Corbin was no longer beside her. He’d moved over to Tarn and was speaking to him in a rapid, quiet voice, a furious expression on his face. Tarn spread his hands in apparent helplessness, and looked over at Marley.

Her voice suddenly urgent, Branwyn said, “Sum it up for me? Is it all faeries?”

Marley shook her head. “Sum it up? I inherited a lot more trouble from my birth mother than anybody ever expected.” Branwyn gave her an irritated look she knew all too well, and she added, “Seriously. If my mother hadn’t been...” she lowered her voice, because it was still hard to say the words to Branwyn, “an angel or something, I wouldn’t...” she considered. “Okay, I’d probably have lost the kids the other day when the lawyer showed up to take them. And they’d be done with me.”

“Or you wouldn’t have been involved at all. Let’s ask Zachariah, shall we?” said Corbin sharply.

“I cannot release him from his cell as I did Branwyn,” said Tarn. “I am compelled to hold him prisoner.” And he looked at Marley with an odd expression on his face.

“Am I failing to play into your Magnificent Bastard plan again?” she asked. Without waiting for an answer, she went on. “But he can have guests, I imagine. I don’t see Ettoriel specifying ‘no guests.’ He’s a guy with bigger things on his mind.”

“Ettorial might have asked me to kill Zachariah,” replied Tarn, “But he didn’t want to explore the limits to the Covenant. Yes, he can have visitors. Release me and I will shape you a passage.”

Marley thought about snapping
Say please!
but she resisted. As she pulled the shield into herself, dizziness rushed over her. She swayed. But she was
fine
!

Branwyn caught her arm and Corbin was at her side in a moment. “I’m all right,” she said impatiently. She stepped away and stumbled. They both caught her this time. She stared down at her hands and then said, “Corbin? Is there anything you can do to help me? Hold off this curse for me? Put together some kind of stimulant spell? Get rid of some of these bruises?”

He hesitated and then said, “I think so. After my friends and I were attacked and I had to bring them back to safety, I kept them alive by linking their health to mine. I can tweak that enchantment so that you can use my energy to do what you need to.”

Branwyn gave Corbin a long look up and down. “Because you look so much better off than she does right now. Why don’t you link
my
health to hers instead? All I’ve been doing this whole time is holding Penny’s hand.”

Corbin started to argue, but Marley said, “Yeah. That’s the right thing to do.” It was, at least, the only way she had of making things up to Branwyn; if Branwyn wanted to help, she’d let her this time.

Corbin’s eyes narrowed. “It’ll take longer to set it up on her.”

“Work on it while I talk to Zachariah,” suggested Marley, which, from his expression, was exactly what Corbin didn’t want her to say. She pulled herself away from the two of them and carefully walked toward Tarn.

Behind her, Branwyn said, “So. Curses? Spells? Will there be chanting?”

But Tarn also had something to say. As she passed by him, he murmured, “You realize, of course, that I still can’t let you leave my realm. It’s one thing to pass here and there within it, and quite another to return to being a thorn in Ettoriel’s side.”

She glanced at him. “And yet Corbin got in without your permission.”

“Do you really believe that?” And he smiled and waved her on.

The passage leading to Zachariah was the hall of an old-fashioned dungeon. At the far end, it opened up into something straight from Hollywood, with a high ceiling, rounded windows, and piles of straw heaped on the floor. There were manacles on the wall and chains welded to staples in the stonework. In one corner, a rough table was set up on a barrel, and two crates served as seats. A chess board was on the table, the pieces carved roughly from bits of wood and stone. There was a game in progress.

Zachariah sat on one of the crates, looking like an actor who had forgotten to go by makeup before getting on set. His black hair was clean and well-groomed, and his face had been recently shaved. He was inspecting the manacle around one ankle. “I suppose I should be glad that I’m not chained to the wall by all four limbs,” he said at the sound of Marley’s footsteps. But when he glanced up, his eyes narrowed.

“Marley. Where are the girls?”

No surprise, no pleasure, no worry, just the cold question. Marley was reminded all of Corbin’s accusations of manipulation. A dozen replies flitted through Marley’s head, mostly sarcastic and angry:
I thought they were with you! Girls? Which girls? I gave them to the nice lawyer who said he knew you
.

But what she actually said was, “Where do you think? How did you think I’d protect them?”

Zachariah stared at her, his eyes dark, with barely a reaction. At last he said, “I understand the stage dressing now. Tarn's sense of humor. You’re a smart girl, Marley. I was sure you’d come up with something.”

“A smart girl with undiscovered talents, eh?” He inclined his head, and something occurred to Marley. “Do you know who my biological parents were? You must, if you’re aware of the... nature of my undiscovered talents. Damn you,” she finished bitterly.

Zachariah hesitated. “I don’t know either of your parents.”

“But you knew about me. About... what I could do. What I was. You set me up to protect the kids if something happened to you. You
used
me.”

“My original information came from another source.” He sat very still, looking at her face. He was just as handsome as ever, although so much had happened to change her perspective now. Tarn’s eyes laughed more than his son’s ever had.

“And that’s why we met? Did you track me down, find me at the park that day, send Lissa and Kari over to me like... like puppies?” Her voice cracked. She couldn’t think of the twins themselves right now. She could barely stand to look at Zachariah, he was so calm. Didn’t he care about the girls, or were they also part of some bigger plan of his?

“Does it matter now, how and why we met? Now that we are here and they are elsewhere?”

“If you’d talked to me, treated me like a person instead of a... a chess piece... maybe we’d
all
be someplace else right now,” Marley snapped.

Suddenly he was standing up and as close to her as the chain, stretched taut, would allow. “You really think so? Because I think that if you’d discovered the truth of your heritage without a reason to ground you, to force you to accept it, you would have run away. I’ve watched you closely for a long time, Miss Claviger. Anything close to the topic of your birth mother is a wind that inspires storms within you.”