She's No Faerie Princess (27 page)

Fiona offered a tentative smile. "I'm sorry to intrude, but Ithought maybe there was something I could do to help. Iknow things can seem pretty overwhelming in situationslike this. I was just asking your son if you might like sometea."

Rachel blinked and stared back at her blankly. "Tea? Um,

I guess…"

Walker shot Fiona a grateful look and guided his sisterback to her chair at the table. "Come on, Rach. Sit down. Fiona will make some tea, and maybe some coffee." Heshot her a hopeful glance and she nodded. "And you and I can talk. I know it's rough, but you need to tell meexactly what happened."

Under the cover of reaching for the teakettle, Fionamanaged to catch Jake's eye. She jerked her headtoward the empty seat on the opposite side of Rachelfrom Walker and raised an eyebrow. Jake nodded andslipped into the chair, taking one of his mother's hands inhis. Satisfied, Fiona turned on the tap and filled the kettle.

"We, uh, we went down to the Bowery for dinner," Rachel said. It was obvious that she had to struggle not to break into tears again. "You know that little dive I used to drag you to on Tuesdays."

"All-you-can-eat buffalo wings. They shouldn't say 'allyou-can-eat' unless they really mean it."

His sister gave a watery laugh. "Yeah, well, they addedsome fine print the week after they kicked you out. Anyway, Shelby never minded going with me, and with Jake living on his own now, sometimes I just don't feellike cooking. So I called her up and asked if she wantedto get something to eat. Maybe see a movie."

Fiona searched quietly through the cabinets, not wantingto disturb the conversation. Or make it difficult tooverhear.

"She said, 'Sure,'" Rachel continued. "Told me she'd meet me there and we'd decide if anything good was playing. If not, we'd come back here and watch

something on DVD. Have a couple of glasses of wine."

Walker squeezed her hand. She held on to him and Jakewith equal ferocity.

"So that's what we did. We had dinner, laughed, talked. She'd had a date last week, and it was a disaster. Some vampire she met at work." Shelby had tended bar at a nightclub in midtown. "He turned out to be a real jerk, which she should have known ahead of time, but anyway, we joked about it. She called him 'Fang-horn Leghorn.' Said he never got tired of the sound of his own voice."

The kettle was heating and the herbal tea bags Fionafound in the cabinets were draped in two mugs with thelogo of a local public radio station. Taking a deep breath, Fiona turned her attention to the coffeemaker and pursedher lips. Why would anyone want to make coffee whenthey could buy a really fabulous cup at any number oflittle coffeehouses scattered through the city like wool onsheep? How exactly did an "automatic drip machine"work, anyway? She didn't think it was the right time toask.

"We looked in the paper, but neither of us was interested in what was playing in the Village, and we felt too lazy to trek uptown, so we decided to come back here." Rachel's voice hitched, and she paused for a minute to collect herself. Fiona couldn't help willing the other woman just a tiny bit of added strength. "It was about nine thirty when we left the restaurant. Still practically lunchtime for that area, so nothing was really crowded. It was a nice night out. We decided not to take a cab."

Fiona gritted her teeth and, with a quick glance over hershoulder to make sure the others weren't watching,

wiggled her fingers at the counter. Instantly the rich, warm scent of coffee wafted from the glass carafe. Another wiggle had the kettle hissing a happy boil. Quickly Fiona filled cups and brought them to the table. She slipped into the remaining empty seat, opposite Rachel.

The other woman looked down at her tea as if shecouldn't quite figure out what to do with it. "I know it's nota great neighborhood, but what could happen to us? We'd both lived in the city all of our lives, and it wasn'tlike we couldn't take care of ourselves." She looked up at Walker, her expression confused. "We should have beenfine."

Fiona could see the grim light in Walker's eyes, but hekept that anger from reflecting in his face. "I know, Rach. You couldn't have expected it."

"We didn't. God, we so didn't." She let go of her brother's hand to push the hair back from her face. She blinked to keep fresh tears at bay. "Even now I don't… I'm not exactly sure. About what happened. It was so fast. We cut through an empty lot. One minute she was laughing about Fanghorn, and the next she just started screaming." A shudder ripped through Rachel and she pressed her hand against her mouth. "I've never heard her scream like that. I never heard anybody scream like that. She didn't have time to shift. She didn't even have time to run. It just… tore into her, like she was made out of paper."

Rachel's voice broke, and she laid her head down on thetable as sobs took over again.

Fiona watched, her own heart aching, as her lover's

sister gave in to the swelling tide of grief, of shock, of guilt. Walker swore under his breath and shoved back his chair to kneel beside his sister's and take her back into

his arms. Rachel clung and wept, and on her other side, Jake looked about ready to start bawling himself. Walker's eyes met Fiona's over the top of Rachel's head and the dark, helpless look in them made the crack in her heart widen.

Quietly and circumspectly, she wove together a spell andsent it winging toward Rachel's heart. Fiona couldn't healthe other woman's pain and wouldn't presume to. Like allmagic users, she had learned to be cautious in trying ininfluence the hearts of others or their minds when theirhearts were involved. Charming the doorman at heruncle's building had been one thing—he didn't know themand didn't care. But if she tried to wipe away Rachel'smemory of her best friend's death, the woman's heartwould know something was wrong. It would feel thestirrings of love and grief, and without the memory to putthose feelings into context, she might not know how tohandle them. Likewise, if Fiona tried to remove the painfrom Rachel's heart, her mind would remember theevents and she would wonder at her own lack of feelingat the recollection.

But Fiona could give the grieving woman some ease. Notheal the wounds but make them a little less ragged. Noterase the memories but bring other kinder, pleasanterones to the foreground. Fiona watched while the magicworked, heard Rachel's wrenching sobs quiet to a gentleweeping, and saw the look of relief on Walker's face. Helooked up at Fiona, and she smiled softly back at him.

"I'm so sorry, honey," he repeated, squeezing his sister

tightly. "I know this is tearing you up, but you need to get it out. And if I'm going to find out who did it, I need to hear everything."

"I can tell you right now who did it," Rachel said. For the first time, anger began to compete with the pain in her voice. "I can't say I've ever seen a demon before, but I sure as hell recognized that's what this was."

Fiona froze. On the other side of the table, she saw Walker stiffen, and she knew exactly what he wasthinking. Squick better come back with some answers. Soon.

"Describe it," Walker ordered, his voice gruff. "Every detail. Tell me exactly what you saw and everything you noticed about the demon. Now."

Rachel's answer did not surprise either of them. It haddefinitely been a demon, one that stood about eight feettall and proportionately wide, muscled like a stone giantbut as fast as a cheetah at full speed. It had dark red skinthat amounted to leathery armor, she said, and sheshould know since she'd tried to hurt it, to make it leave Shelby alone. Rachel had noticed horns, not the smallstumps Squick had, but heavy, curving ram's horns thatcurled along the sides of its skull, protecting it from anyblows to the head. Its legs had bent backward, like agoat's, and ended not in feet but in huge cloven hooves. The description made it seem somewhat similar to thefirst demon Fiona and Walker had encountered, just aftershe'd entered Manhattan through the Faerie gate. Unlikethat monster, however, this sounded like an upgradedversion. Demon 2.0.

A muscle in Walker's jaw clenched, and Fiona could see

him struggling to be gentle with his sister, instead of barking orders and demanding answers the way she knew he was inclined to do. "I know you said you didn't see where it came from, Rach, but did you see where it went? What direction it left in?"

Rachel laughed, a hoarse, rough, incredulous sound. "Sorry, Bro, but I didn't exactly stay around to say myfarewells. I saw Shel die. It was kind of hard to miss,considering her head landed next to me about twenty feetaway from the rest of her. There wasn't anything I coulddo to help her, so I ran. I shifted, and I ran home as fastas I could manage it. I left her there. I just left her bodythere in that lot and ran because I was too scared to do

anything else! I had Jake alert the pack as soon as I got

home, but—"

"You did the right thing," Fiona said. She could tell by the way Walker's jaw had clenched shut that he couldn't manage to form the words just then, so she said them for him. "You said it yourself. There was nothing you could have changed by staying behind. If you had, there just would have been more people grieving tonight, and two women to mourn for instead of one."

Rachel looked startled, as if she'd forgotten Fiona wasthere, but when she opened her mouth, her son cut heroff.

"She's right, Mom. You did the right thing," Jake said. He had to clear his throat before he got the words out, but he did, and he even backed them up with a sad crooked little smile. "After all, it would be really unfair of you to die and leave Uncle Tobe paying the rest of my tuition. Especially since I've been thinking about med school."

She stared at him for a long time while the words sank in. Then she gave a watery hiccupping laugh and reachedout to grab her son by the back of the neck and haul himclose for a kiss. "Don't worry, kid. You're not getting rid ofme anytime soon. But you're still going to have to do yourown laundry this weekend."

Fiona felt the change in the atmosphere of the room. Thegrief was still there, and the anger, but the worst of thetension had defused. Exhaustion took its place, and Rachel seemed to droop in her chair. She looked tiredand worn and a bit numb after the violence of herrecollections.

Her son watched her with concern plain on his face. "Mom, I think you need to go up to bed. Try to get somesleep."

"I don't think I could, baby. Every time I close my eyes, I

just see—" She broke off and looked down.

"You have to try," Walker said. "You're worn out. Not only is it late, but you've had a huge shock, and you've cried enough to put any five women I know to sleep. You need to at least lie down."

She shook her head. "You're a sweetheart of a babybrother, Tobias, but I just can't."

Fiona spoke up. "I understand. I'm sure the last thing youneed is to shut your eyes and start reliving the past fewhours, but if you want, I could maybe help you sleep. Keep you from having nightmares."

For the first time since they'd walked in the door, the

Lupine woman seemed to really see Fiona. Rachel's face

smoothed into a mask of polite interest, but something deeper lurked behind it. Curiosity, maybe, and speculation. "I'm sorry. It's really rude of me, but I'm afraid I can't remember your name."

"It's not rude at all. My name is Fiona. I just wish we were

meeting under different circumstances."

Rachel nodded. "So do I. Especially since this is the firsttime my baby brother has ever brought a woman home tomeet his family." She slid Walker a reproving glance. "How long have you two been seeing each other?"

"Not long." Walker went from looking alternately concerned and homicidal to looking decidedly uncomfortable.

"I had just come into the city for a visit when I ran into your brother." That sounded good. True, as far as it went, but vague enough not to start trouble. "He's been letting me tag along with him."

"Oh, right." The speculation in Rachel's eyes shifted into a frank evaluation of Fiona's merits and flaws. She tried not to shift from one foot to the other. "And did you say you're a witch?"

Fiona shook her head. "No."

"I'd just assumed, since you offered me something to help me sleep. Did you mean some kind of herbal thing, then?"

"No. I'm not a witch, but I do have some magic," she said, wondering what Walker wanted her to reveal and what he wanted her to conceal. "The offer was genuine. Just a

tiny little suggestion, and you could get to sleep without

having any nightmares."

Rachel looked uncomfortable, as if she was trying tofigure out how to refuse without sounding rude. "Thanks,but, uh, I'll be fine. The tea is great. It always helps mesleep."

"Fiona isn't a sorcerer, Rach, and she's not going to turn you into a toad," Walker said, his eyes on the woman he'd claimed as his mate. "She's Fae."

His sister's eyes widened. "You're kidding."

Walker shook his head.

Rachel stared at him for a long minute before sheseemed to realize he wasn't going to grin and tell her hewas joking. Her eyes narrowed on his face; then sheturned and took another look at Fiona. Brushing herbrother's hands away, she stepped closer and gave the Fae a head-to-toe once-over. She took another step, andher nostrils flared as she inhaled deeply. Her chin hit herchest, and she spun back to face her brother.