Whiskey and Water (41 page)

Melissa was a smart kid, a PhD candidate
who'd be defending her dissertation any semester, and Matthew had known her
since she was an undergrad. She'd figure something out. If he was
very
lucky,
she'd been covering for him without being asked. Assuming he was still alive a
week hence, he might want to keep his job, and he owed his students
consideration no matter what else was going on. Although the bribe Kit had
offered would go a long way toward smoothing things over with any English department
in the world, assuming the documents had s
ome
sort of provenance.

He was getting
far
ahead of
himself.

He peeled off his talismanic coat,
grateful that he had not needed its protection on his journey into Faerie and
Hell. That kind of luck didn't bear too much inspection, so instead he
crucified the coat on a hanger to air out and changed into far less
ostentatious clothing: blue jeans, a T-shirt, a blue flannel shirt, a pair of
sneakers. He found a too-tight pair of jeans that might fit Kit if he punched
another hole in Matthew's belt. Geoff's clothing was a little dressy, maybe,
but not completely outré.

Lily, theatrically unself-conscious,
talked Geoff into loosening the laces of her corset so she could unhook the
busk and wriggle out of it. Matthew was just coming out of his bedroom with an
offering of T-shirts and a red woolen sweater with a pattern of oak leaves
across the chest when she stretched like a cat, her spine cracking as it
aligned. The black lace tube top she was wearing as a singlet revealed a band of
skin above the skirt slung around her hips, pale flesh pressure-lined and
dusted above the cleft of her buttocks with sleek, sparse dark hair.
"Lily," he said, forcing his eyes to the back of her head. When she turned,
the flash of green metal caught his eye. He experienced about the degree of
success ignoring the shadowy detail of areolae and piercings behind the lace
stretched over her wide-set breasts that might be expected. "Something a
little warmer," he said, and pushed the sweater into her hands.

"Where are we going?" Geoff
asked, while Lily was hauling the sweater over her head and Kit was looking for
someplace inconspicuous to leave his rapier, and Matthew was staring at his
half-renovated kitchen and wondering why he'd never finished ripping out the
harvest gold and avocado green. It was as if his life had entered a kind of
suspension when Kelly died, a finger on the cosmic PAUSE button.

He needed to move out of this place.

"I don't know yet," he said.
"Someplace we can talk." He pressed his finger to his lips, a
reminder.
This apartment isn't safe.
Jane paid for it. Jane, he realized
now, with an old familiar chill, had never lost her grip on his leash.

On Central Park West, Jane Andraste's grip
was concerned with the control of an entirely different set of leashes. Felix
Luray sat on the edge of an ivory-upholstered armchair, his jacket sleeves
tugged up to reveal French cuffs, his elbows on his knees. Beside him sat
Christian, who had not spoken overmuch, but watched, amused. And across from
Felix, sipping tippy Ceylon from a gold-rimmed teacup, dressed in
close-tailored perfection, sat a monster with a lemony smile.

Jane didn't think the Bunyip intended them
immediate physical harm. He had reasons of his own for being there, reasons he
laid out carefully and formally to Felix while Jane waited unobtrusively in the
background, fondling her marcasite bracelet, and listened.

Felix poured more tea, and looked through
his lashes at the Bunyip. "So what you're saying, so circuitously — or
circumspectly, if you prefer — is that Mist will
help
us against the
Faeries?"

Bunyip reached out one splay-fingered hand
and pinched up his teacup, delicately, the gold-painted china handle warm
between his finger and thumb. "You misapprehend."

"Enlighten me." Felix wielded
the sugar tongs like an extension of his. hand. Each cube drifted through steaming
golden fluid, raining granules of sugar into the bottom of the cup. They
rippled like sand in a Zen garden before dissolving under the influence of the
spoon. A few flecks of tea leaf sailed round and round, caught in the vortex
while it lasted.

"Mist wishes Kelpie returned to his
proper role as a wild element. Tamed, he serves to support the Promethean
influence."

"It's not one of ours who tamed
him," Felix said. The tea was tannic even through the sweetness of the sugar,
a tang that contracted his taste buds and prickled his tongue.

"That's irrelevant," the Bunyip
answered, as a chime alerted them that the elevator was ascending. "Donall,"
Jane said, and stood up to see to it, stepping around a rice paper and ebony
screen. Bunyip continued, "The symbolism reflects the Promethean plan:
nature chained."

"Keep going," Felix said, as
Jane bent her concentration on the new arrival. There was a limit to how much
leaning on Donall she could afford. She couldn't risk driving him away, as she
had Matthew—and he didn't need her as much as Matthew had. Her only hold over
him — besides her own considerable force of will and emotional power—was the
NYPD's lack of a methodology for dealing with magical crimes. Seven years is a
long time in human terms, but for a bureaucracy, it's an eyeblink. And it's
hard to figure out how to screen and hire magicians when you've just become
aware that they exist.

As she opened the door, she met the gaze
of the Dragon behind Don-all's eyes. "Come in," she said, and stood
aside.

He came, puffy-faced, red-eyed.
"There's something — "

Jane touched her ring, icy cold under the
patina of gold. "I know," she said. "Would you like some tea?
No, you drink coffee, don't you?"

"Tea's fine if it's made," he
said, making no move to shuck off his coat as she locked the door behind him.
"I can't stay. What did you want me for, Jane?"

"Come in and meet somebody."

Felix and Bunyip had fallen as silent as
Christian when the door opened. When Jane and Don rounded the screen, they were
sitting expectant as nestlings, their chins lifted and their eyes bright. She
made the introduction and poured Don a cup, •which became dwarfed in his
enormous hands. "Bunyip's brought us information from the other
side," Jane said.

A mug might have eased the arthritic ache
of the ring on Don's hand. The teacup was small and eggshell fragile, not
designed for cupping one's hands around to absorb the warmth. He put it to his mouth
and sipped, wishing he'd thought to ask for sugar and lemon. "What sort of
information?"

"We were just sorting that bit
out." Felix edged over on the couch toward Christian, offering Don a corner.
Don didn't move, except to set his cup back on the saucer balanced on his other
palm. Felix glanced at the Bunyip, who sat stiffly upright beside the cushion
occupied by his fedora, and frowned. "Please go on."

Bunyip nodded. His hands empty now, he
gestured. "I want to offer you an alliance. I need to remove the water-horse,
and you wish to avoid a direct confrontation with the forces of Faerie and the
potential loss of your position as archmage, Jane Maga. Is that correct? "

"We'd prefer to see Faerie driven
entirely from the iron world," Jane said, abandoning her pretense of being
an observer when Bunyip stared at her. "And I want Matthew back. Unharmed.
He's too useful to be left wandering around uncontrolled."

"It'll be a neat trick to get him to
come crawling back," Felix said. He picked up and finished his tea. "He's
not self-directing. If presented with no other choice than working for me,
he'll fall back into line."

"Jane," Don said.
"Somewhere out there, somebody else is going to be killed and eaten
tonight." She nodded, and raised a delaying hand. "A moment. Bunyip?"

"I need access to the water-horse
without his protectors. I can defeat
him,
but the Daoine Seeker and the
Mage he travels with are trouble.'

"Jane." Don set the cup and
saucer down on a plinth, not caring that they rattled, and folded his arms. "Donall,
I said
wait.
Bunyip, assuming I can arrange this thing—and I think I
can— what do I get in return? You don't want to see a Promethean
renaissance."

"On the contrary," he said,
"an alliance would suit me very well. And in return, I can give you access
to Matthew and Christoferus Magi, at a time and place of your choosing, before
the formal duel. Or even at the duel itself. I would be happy to deal with them
for you there."

"What would you do?" Felix
asked. "Turn them into black swans?"

Bunyip showed his teeth. "It wouldn't
be the first time," he said. "But you'll have heard that story."
"I haven't," Don interjected, which earned him a silencing glance
from Felix.

"The form of the duel is set,"
Jane answered. "It would be very bad symbolism indeed to break that bargain."

"What if I ensured Matthew would not
be there?" Bunyip covered his mouth with his hand.

Jane paused. She looked at Christian, who
blinked, and Felix, who nodded, and then turned her head to meet Don's gaze.

Don didn't know, frankly, what to tell
her. He was rocking from foot to foot with impatience. Somewhere out in the
darkness, someone was dying horribly, or was about to—and the ring on his hand would
tell him where, if the damned Archmage would just let him go
do
something
about it.
She's talking about deriding this guy to kill Matthew.
Or take
him captive, maybe.

That was the thing. Don
knew
Matthew.
Not well, kind of casually—but Matthew had never set off that cold feeling of
black dread that crowded Don's gut when he looked at the guy in the pin-striped
suit on Jane's white nubby silk sofa. "Let me speak with Matthew," he
said, shoving his hands into his pockets. "Maybe I can talk some reason
into him."

"Then what can Bunyip give us?"
Jane asked.

Don lifted one shoulder and let it fall.
"Ask him who killed our murder victims. Ask him to deal with them."

Bunyip smiled. His teeth were yellow,
tea-stained, and very sharp. Murder victims?"

"Althea Benning," Don said.
"And now, Nancy Rivera. Murdered and eaten. By something Fae, I think, but
the damned governor's office isn't having any."

"Ah." Bunyip folded his hands.
"There's an easy answer to that question. But I'd rather not say because
I suspect you will act in haste, Detective Smith. You see, there's a good deal
of magical energy bound up in a death, in a sacrifice. In a life. And there are
those who have neither love for the Fae nor compassion for those the Fae have
touched, and who might go to great lengths to pursue a vendetta."

A good police officer is half psychologist
and half wicked stepmother. The Bunyip might be Fae. But by the way he settled
back against the sofa cushions, by the sharp edge of his smile, Donall knew.
Knew that he was being manipulated, of course, and knew that there were things
the Bunyip wasn't telling him.

And by the quick compression of Jane's
lips as she reached for her teacup, a little too quickly, he understood that
Jane knew it too. And that she'd been hiding things from Don that his own
fondness for a guy who should have been the first suspect on his list had made
him overlook.

But Matthew had been there, first man on
the scene. Called it in. Taken the surviving kids under his wing, and handed
them off to a pack of Faeries.

And it was Matthew Szczegielniak Jane
Andraste was protecting by keeping him here while his ring burned cold agony on
his hand. As she had protected Matthew all along: paying his bills, keeping him
safe. She shook her head at Bunyip. "Don't be ridiculous."

"Aw, hell," Don said, and turned
to walk out of the penthouse.

Christian was there in front of him.
"Donall Magus," he said, "give your archmage a chance to speak. She
has not lied."

Don checked and met the young man's hazel
eyes. The lids narrowed with false earnestness, and Don shook his head.
"Learn to lie better, kid," he said, and shouldered past.

He was aware and surprised that Jane
restrained Felix with a gentling hand when Felix would have stood. He was even
more surprised that he made it down to the street unscathed.

He walked past the doorman and paused on
the sidewalk, glancing down at his ring. It hurt. It made his arm ache all the
way up to his brain.

He pulled out his cell phone and dialed by
rote. "Carmen," he said, as he jogged toward the pain in his ring.
"Yeah. How fast can you get me a warrant for the arrest of a Dr. Matthew
Szczegielniak? Suspicion of murder. Yeah, wake up anybody you want. And let me
spell that for you, hang on . . ."

When he ended the call, he stuffed the
cell phone back into his pocket and
ran.

Vast wings glided overhead, flitting
between dark buildings, and the scent of iron and magic turned the flyer's
antlered head. A rich scent, enticing — but Orfeo the peryton had been charged
to seek particular prey this evening. And
that
scent drew him on, past
the unprotected apprentice Mage, past the bound sea god, skimming over the
rooftops of New York with the city's light caressing his wings.