War for the Oaks (32 page)

"When I was a kid, I read
Black Beauty
. There were horse-drawn cabs in that. Are you that old?"

He sighed deeply. "Older."

"How much older?"

"Older, older, older. I shall
not
tell you, so you may as well leave off, my primrose."

She snorted. "I think that means I should give up. You've started sweet-talking."

"I am torn," the phouka said, grinning, "between responding, 'Oh, absolutely,' and 'What do you mean,
started?'
" He grabbed her hand, dropped a kiss on the knuckles, and loped across the street. Eddi felt the touch of his mouth on her hand for an inexplicably long time.

Carla lived in what had probably been intended as a duplex. But in South Minneapolis, attics frequently became studio apartments. Carla's had a big arched window at the front of the house, dormers along one side, and a back door to the outside stairway. In summer, she had to open all of them, and was fond of explaining that it turned the place from a conventional oven to a convection one.

Eddi followed the phouka up the front stairway, which was carpeted in faded red and had a comfortably dusty, Victorian smell. On Carla's door, at the top of the stairs, was a door knocker in the shape of a lacquered wooden face with a sappy expression. When the cord that dangled out of its grin was pulled, it opened its mouth and stuck out its tongue with a loud clack. The phouka found this delightful. Eddi had to whack his hand to keep him from pulling the cord several more times.

"Come in!" Carla yelled.

It was a pleasant apartment, all Carla's jokes aside. It was shaped by the angles of the eaves and the stubby fingers of the dormers. The walls were white, the floor a checkerboard of black and white linoleum tiles interrupted by the big rag rug in the front half of the room.

On one wall hung a papier-mache mask of a unicorn's head with mane, forelock, and chin whiskers of curly white hair, and a gilded horn tied with multicolored ribbon; another wall sported an old hooked rug depicting a moose, a lake, and what were either pine trees or pointy green mountains. A collection of little cast-metal toy cars competed for space with books, magazines, and comic books.

Carla greeted them with, "I've got money for last night, and two more gigs, also on account of last night."

"I feel like I'm living in a movie musical," Eddi said. "Is this what I've been paying my dues for?"

"Don't jinx us, girl, we're not famous yet. Anyway, have a seat. Coffee?"

They nodded in unison.

Eddi watched Carla take a couple of running steps and slide sockfooted across the kitchen linoleum. "Ah . . . is it just band business that's made you giddy?"

"Me? I'm not giddy."

"Uh-huh," Eddi said.
Yes, you are. Dan must be a nice guy. If he's not, I'll kick him down the stairs
.

The door knocker clacked, and Dan's voice called out from the other side. "Yo! It's me!" Carla opened it to reveal Dan in the hall, a grocery bag in each arm and his glasses sliding down his nose. Carla pushed the glasses back up and took one of the bags.

"I couldn't find the weird noodles," he told her. Then he saw Eddi and the phouka, and grinned. "Oh, hiya."

Eddi watched them empty the bags on the counter. They seemed at once comfortable and shy with each other—though perhaps the shyness was only because she was there to watch them. Eddi hadn't realized how intimate the business of putting away the groceries could be.

Dan got a beer from the refrigerator and dropped down in a canvas chair across from Eddi. "So, any idea when the other guys're gonna get here?"

Eddi shrugged and looked at the phouka. "You're the one who delivered the message. How
did
you deliver the message, anyway?"

"Paper airplane," the phouka replied.

Then they heard a quick, light tread on the stairs, and knuckles on the door panel. "Bingo," Carla muttered, and called out, "Come in!"

And Willy stood in the doorway, tall, slender, the perfect Romantic hero. He wore a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up and the neck open, a skinny black tie knotted loose, tight black denims, and black high-top sneakers. His hair was in his eyes again, black and white like the rest of him. His gaze fell on Eddi first, though she was hardly in the spot most visible from the door. It was a grave look, but there was no accusation in it, no anger. Eddi felt the phouka's stillness next to
her. She smiled at Willy. She couldn't remember ever having to judge a smile so carefully as that one. After a moment, Willy answered with one of his own. Eddi heard the phouka exhale.

"Hullo, all," Willy said. He sat down on a bench under the front windows. The light behind him made it hard to see his face; it lit the streak of white in his hair and made the shoulders of his white shirt glow. "Before we get to business," Willy said, his voice oddly constrained, "I've been directed to invite you all to a party."

They stared.

"A month from last night, exactly, in Tower Hill Park. Fun starts at full dark. And there'll be music; I suggest you bring things to make it with."

"A month from—," Carla began, but the phouka interrupted.

"Midsummer's Eve," he said softly. "It's decided, isn't it?"

Willy nodded. "Three days after Midsummer's Day."

"Where?" the phouka demanded.

"Como Park."

Eddi was watching the phouka's face, looking for clues, wanting to know what was good news and what was bad. This was the date and place of the next battle. But she didn't understand the puzzlement on the phouka's face.

"Como Park is under our dominion," the phouka said at last.

Willy raised an eyebrow and nodded.

"And only three days after Midsummer—Oak and Ash, why has she given us every advantage?"

"What're you talking about?" Dan said.

The phouka explained quickly. "But
why?"
he asked Willy once again. "If the Dark Lady wanted to cede this battle to us, there are easier ways. What does she want?"

Willy shrugged, but his voice was at odds with the gesture. "To throw us off our stride, maybe. To make us nervous. I don't know."

Eddi stood up, paced across the room to a dormer window and back. "What I want to know," she said at last "is who came up with the party invitation?"

Willy raised his head. "Beg your pardon?"

"Who is it who wants the noncombatants involved?" Eddi gestured at Dan and Carla. "Was this the Wicked Witch's idea?"

"Midsummer's Eve is one of the truces," Willy said, but not as if he thought it answered her.

"Big damn deal. Whether there's shooting going on or not, there's no reason for them to have anything to do with Faerie."

"Already do," someone said hoarsely behind her. She turned to find Hedge in the door, glowering at her through his hair. He used his chin to point at Carla and Dan.

"The kid's right," Carla said. "Look at us. Here's bloody Tarn Lin on my left"—she nodded toward Willy—"and the Kennel Club's answer to Mr. Ed in front of me. I dunno what Hedge does, but I'm sure it's something good. And they're all drinking coffee and chatting it up in my living room." Carla came out from behind Dan's chair, walked over, took hold of Eddi's shoulders, and gave her a little shake. "And then there's my best friend. Friendship comes from shared experience, right? So what am I supposed to say when my mother wants to know why I don't hang around with you anymore? 'Oh, you know. She got a little fey, and we just drifted apart.' "

Eddi shook her head. "I don't want to have to say that I got a little fey, and you got a little dead."

Carla looked down, and shrugged. "Well, neither do I. But this is a party. If there's a truce on, it's safer than a lot of parties I've been to."

"I can't stop you, can I?"

"No."

"You're a jerk," Eddi said gently. "Watch your step, then. These people are weird."

"I know that. I work with three of 'em." But Carla nodded once, unsmiling, and Eddi felt better.

It was the reviews that startled her. The quality of Eddi and the Fey was easy to get used to. The almost telepathic musical unity that enabled them to pick up an idea and run with it, their growing sense of showmanship, the development of a group style and a characteristic sound—Eddi felt comfortable with those. It was the reviews that were strange.

They were good reviews; they came as close to gushing as reviewers ever did. What bothered Eddi was the praise for things that weren't there. The additional voices that the reviewer thought were from the digital sampler. The electric fiddle part on a song that didn't have one. The lighting effects.

"What lighting effects?" Eddi wailed from the depths of the couch in the practice space. "I can understand the rest of it—Dan does enough neat stuff with the keyboards that you could mistake it for almost anything. Especially if you were busy dancing, which God knows they all were." She propped herself up on one elbow and lectured Dan, Carla, Willy, and the phouka. "You notice that not one reviewer has admitted to spending the whole night dancing."

"Whatsisname came close, in
City Pages,"
Dan said generously.

"Hah. They're all afraid it'll ruin their reputation for critical reserve. But where did they get the lighting effects?"

Carla was tuning her drumheads. "Maybe," (thump) "whoever was running," (thump) "sound was playing," (thump, thump) "with the lights, too."

"The Uptown's got a fixed light setup—once you focus 'em, they're either on or off. They could have done more than that at the benefit, but nobody did."

Willy, who was sitting on his amp, looked at the phouka. The phouka looked at the floor.

"Uh-huh," Eddi said, glaring at them both. "Enough with the conspiracy of silence. What have you been doing?"

The phouka smiled up at her, a glowing look that nearly robbed her of breath. But it was Willy who answered her.

"We haven't done a thing. You have."

Eddi stared at him.

"Yes, you have. They're your images. Or in some cases, sounds. When you're wrapped up in making music, there's more of you in it than you think." Willy stretched his long legs out before him and leaned back. "You're casting illusions."

She looked at Carla. Eddi could no longer scoff at the possibility of magic—she'd promised the phouka she wouldn't. But Carla was free to doubt assertions like Willy's.

Carla only said, "She is?"

"Mmm. Just be glad she started with illusions. If her subconscious was dabbling in the elements, she could have set the Uptown on fire."

"Rubbish," the phouka said cheerfully. "With all due respect, of course. You know perfectly well that manipulating the elements is conjuring of a high intellectual order. It does
not
happen by accident." Eddi suspected that the last sentence was for her benefit. She was grateful; it was nice to know that she wouldn't burn down her apartment building in her sleep.

"So, how did I know how to do this?" Eddi asked, more or less of the phouka. "Have you been whispering in my ear?"

He shook his head irritably. "Were you taught to pull yourself upright, or to crawl?"

"It's not the same. Those are normal developments."

The phouka raised one eyebrow.

"This isn't normal," Eddi snapped.

Willy rose from his amp, a quick, impatient movement. "Does it matter? You've got power, you've started to use it. Learn to control it, before somebody does it for you." He ducked under the strap of his guitar and began to play scales.

"How likely is that?" Eddi said.

Willy's hands stopped, and he looked up. His face was suddenly made younger with doubt and concern. "I'm not sure. But I know it can be done. And if I know, then it's certain
she
does."

Eddi didn't have to ask who "she" was. "Then I suppose I'd better start practicing."

There was a rattle of feet coming fast up the iron stairs outside. Eddi stopped halfway from the couch to her guitar, Willy and the
phouka were suddenly still as well. When the door opened, it was only Hedge, and Eddi could see the tension go out of her bodyguards.

"Hello," Eddi said, "you're late."

Hedge ducked his head and looked embarrassed. He was even messier than usual, his brown hair every which way, his gray sleeveless sweatshirt dark with sweat down the middle, grass stains on his jeans. "Sorry," he mumbled, and shot her a look full of appeal.

"It's okay. We haven't started yet, anyway. What kept you?"

He turned his amp on and picked up the Steinberger. "Midsummer's Eve," he muttered, as if that explained everything.

Dan grinned. "Been rollin' beer kegs, huh?"

Hedge turned one of his smiles on, and when he spoke, he was as close to laughing as Eddi had ever heard him. "Beer, whoo! Gonna be s'prised. One big blowout t'night!"

"Uh-oh." Carla shook her head at Dan. "I don't know if I should let you go, Party Boy."

"Gonna have to carry you home—you better let me go."

Eddi turned to quiet them down and start practice. She paused when she saw Willy. He was watching Dan and Carla with an odd, stricken look, a mingling of recognition and regret. Then he dropped his gaze, squatted beside his amplifier, and toyed with the midrange control.

"You guys want to warm up with something," Eddi said gruffly, "or work on the new one?"

"New one!" Dan said promptly. "Let's do some motorcycle music."

They knew the tune and the words; now it was time for the real work, the business of making the song sound like Eddi and the Fey. Eddi gave them her rough outline for the arrangement; they worked the parts over, and put it all together.

Dan played a keyboard line like a question that demanded an answer, and Willy punctuated it with a harsh chord. After two of those, Carla joined Willy with a distant growl of thunder on one of her toms. Hedge's bass began to throb with the hungry rhythm of tuned engines and tires on pavement seams. There was the digitally sampled crash of a cymbal that went on and on, glass breaking in slow motion—and the band welled up behind it like water, into the first verse.

Fantasies of violence,
Breaking bottles on the wall,
Hungry for the motion, for the action,
For it all
.