Whiskey and Water (49 page)

Eyes closed, he felt her watching. It
crept through his chilled body like the heat of the bathwater, drying his
mouth. Lassitude weighed his flesh, his arms, his eyelids. Heat, and the
liquor, and blood loss and plain exhaustion. He couldn't remember when last
he'd slept; his head spun when he tried. Her hand touched his throat again,
impersonal and efficient, and then slid across his clavicle, over his pectoral muscle,
the rough pad of her thumb brushing his nipple, resulting directly in the catch
of his breath in his throat. She laughed, harsh and rich, her braid breaking
the surface of the water and coiling wetly on his abdomen.

Her words warmed his mouth. "Shall I
kiss you again?"

He couldn't answer. The sound of the rain
had ended, but he knew it had not ceased falling. He could no longer hear Kit's
and Lily's voices, drifting muffled from the garden, or Don stirring honey into
a mug by the fire. Time had stopped; Morgan had stopped it. They would not be
disturbed.

Her thumb circled, evoking an electric
tickle that furred down his belly to his groin. Fingernail and thumbnail
creased flesh hard, sharping into pain. He gasped and reached, blindly. Not for
her hand. For her head, her hair, the waterlogged serpent of her braid.

He pulled her mouth hard against his own.

The blood tightening his mouth was
probably his, smeared on her lips, carried on the splash of bathwater between
them. She bent double over the edge of the tub, the rim indenting her soft belly,
one hand twisting his nipple—pulling until she pulled him away from the end of
the tub, hauling him into the kiss—while her free hand skinned her jeans off
her hips. A brief struggle followed while she kicked out of boots and trousers.
She slithered into the water as Matthew opened his eyes.

The blouse pinkened as it adhered to her.
From his blood in the water, it must be, because her skin was too white to lend
the color. Her fingers twisted deftly one last time, her thighs soap-slippery
and yielding against his hips as she glided into the water. In his blurred
vision, a rainy light limned her: the silver-streaked braid knotted in his left
hand, the steamy droplets condensing on her lashes. Her shoulders and
baby-kissed breasts trembled under the gathered second skin of her blouse.
Changeling eyes locked his as her hand wrapped flesh no hotter than the
bathwater, twisting until he keened like a fox. "Morgan!"

Her tongue flicked, and all he could see
was the way it skipped along her teeth.

He could lift his right hand. He pressed
it against her chest, reaching for her breastbone, found it pressed against her
breast instead. She didn't flinch from the scar or the twisted fingers, but
moaned through her teeth and rubbed against his hand, cushiony flesh and cotton
gauze, her nipple peaking. She leaned forward, fingers rippling as she lifted
him, slid over him. Water lapped his throat in time with her tongue, slopped
over the lip of the tub, scattered the flagstones. He
ached,
like cold
fire drawn along his bones.

Her skin brushed his, throat speckled like
a trout, wet curls skimming his glans. "Morgan," he said, between
his teeth. "Stop — "

Shh." She lifted herself from the
water, gleaming, her breasts level with his mouth for a moment as she leaned
back. Off-balance.

It didn't matter that he didn't have much
strength. He had enough for one quick pull, a sharp yank on her braid that sent
her crashing back, yelping like a much younger girl. She smacked against the
side of the basin, water flying, and slid down while he hauled himself to his
knees, his hand on the tub rim the only thing holding him up. His arm
trembled, his whole body shaking, sick need and adrenaline twisting in his
guts. Something ugly down there, something primal and flayed. He stepped on that
hunger before it could make him reach for her again.

"Morgan," he said. Third time,
voice rattling against his teeth. "God damn it,
listen
to me when I
tell you to stop."

She pushed herself up, back against the
sloped side, drenched lavender blossoms flecking her cheeks and breasts.
"Can't blame a girl for trying," she said, and stripped her shirt
over her hair. "I've got your blood all over me anyway, and Kit and the
other will need to bathe too. As long as I'm here, would you mind passing me
the soap?"

Wordlessly, he did, and found the flannel
on the floor beside the tub.

"I thought I had you," she said,
evenly, unbraiding her hair to scrub it in the still-steaming water. "So
did I." His skin prickled, and it wasn't the heat of the bathwater or the
lavender oil.

"Well, good to know I haven't
entirely lost my touch. So. If the direct approach won't work, answer me this
—'

He lifted his chin. She was offering the
soap, an odd-shaped yellow bar curved in her magnificent fingers. He took it,
and lathered the flannel. There was a lot of blood to work loose from the
creases, and he ordered himself to remain unself-conscious that he was
scrubbing at it in front of a naked woman whose legs were laced between his
own. His own recent inability to obey orders notwithstanding. "Yes, Morgan?"

"If I can't seduce you, Matthew
Magus, then what will you take in trade?"

Faerie plays tricks on occasion, with
space and with time. Kit and Lily, buckets slung over their shoulders, returned
to the house to find Matthew —dressed randomly in hose and a bulky, borrowed
sweater— drinking yet another mug of warmed cider and nibbling cold chicken,
while Morgan combed out her water-dark hair. The tub had been emptied, a wet
oblong surrounded a drain through a gap in the foundation. Don stood beside it,
scrubbing blood spots on his jacket with cola water, his sleeves rolled up over
thick, sinewy forearms and his collar open far enough to reveal his powder-blue
undershirt and the black nylon edge of the ballistic vest he hadn't removed.
His holster stretched across the pale blue cotton of his shirt, creasing the
fabric in his armpits. The shirt was clean; blood hadn't soaked through his
jacket, and his face looked freshly washed. Kit set the buckets down with a
clunk and turned to help Lily, who didn't need it, but he wasn't about to
permit Morgan a look at his face until he was certain his expression was
mastered.

"Get lost?" Don said. He
gestured to flannels and soap when Kit looked up.

"A wrong turn between here and there,
apparently," Kit answered, while Lily stared at him, befuddled. He rubbed
at his face, flaking away blood, and unhooked one steaming bucket from the yoke.
"I shall use the tub if you'd like the basin."

Her attention followed his to the
washstand by the stove. She took the toiletries he handed her, collected the
second warm bucket, and went, struggling out of Matthew's rain-soaked sweater
along the way. Morgan stood as she passed and took it away from her, spreading
it on the hearthstones to dry. The dogs were out in the rain somewhere, so
there was no competition.

"Kit," Morgan said, without
looking up from the wet cotton she fussed into shape, "I've put some clothes
you left behind on the loom. Trews and boots, shirts and coats. Once you're
clean."

He grunted and rubbed soap through his
hair, bent over the edge of the heavy tub. The rain had rendered him halfway
clean, and when he upended the bucket over his head and shoulders, the worst of
the rest sluiced away. The blood under his nails would have to wait.

Matthew was still looking at him,
speculatively, when he straightened. Kit glowered and turned away. He had no
more right to condemn the man for falling to Morgan's charms than he had Lily
for Falling to Christian's. But it remained a peculiarly unsatisfying satisfaction
to observe one's errors repeated.

He toed out of soaked boots. Peeling off
the wet jeans could hardly have been more unpleasant. Harsh fabric scraped his
skin; he left them in a pile and stalked nude and shivering to the loom.
"There are two suits of clothes."

"One's for Lily," Morgan said.
She gave the sweater one last prod and rocked back on the balls of her feet,
satisfied. "I thought your things would fit her."

Of course they would. She was nearly his
height, only a bit heavier in build. The hose would set off her legs. He stole
a half-covetous look under his arm, eye drawn to the edge of her shoulder blade
whitening skin as she lifted her arms, the nubbed arc of her spine.
"Green," he called, "or black?"

She turned, hands in her hair, the stretch
of her pectoral muscles lifting her breasts and a thread of water sliding down
her nose. "Black," she said, keeping her eyes fastened on his face.
More or less.

He grinned, and she blushed—sharply, for a
girl who wasn't very fair. The heat slid up her face like warm, rising water.
He was as naked as an angel, and as untroubled by it. And he had an entire wardrobe
here, in this witch's house.

Mind your manners, Lily.
"Except shouldn't you choose?"

"It matters not." Both shirts
were white lawn, one ruffled and frilled and one with falling collars. The
green coat was moire silk, the fashion of a few hundred years back. The black
doublet was older, dusty glove-soft velvet slashed with emerald taffeta,
embroidered with emeralds and peridots on silver thread. He'd forgotten he'd
ever owned it, but there was no mistaking it now. It was sewn when Elizabeth was queen, and Will had mocked him for it —

He sighed, and picked up the coat in
Faerie green. It would serve. He wondered if Morgan would loan him a sword.

After they were dressed —Kit efficient,
shameless, and Lily with her back turned, in hiding behind the loom and its
half-completed tapestry
—
Morgan chided them onto the benches beside her
table and brought platters from the pantry. "You may eat without
fear," she said. "Of my food and drink, in any case."

"Too late," Lily murmured, but
only Kit heard her.

Matthew crossed the floor gingerly and sat
down—next to Kit, surprisingly, and not Morgan. "Bunyip," Matthew
said, accepting the slice of bread and jam that Morgan pressed on him and
setting it down on the table, untouched "Tell me about him."

Unlike Matthew, Kit was eating with a
will. Not untidily—his table manners were very neat, though he ate mostly with
his hands (and occasional resorted to a knife)—but rapidly, small bites of
bread and cheese and onion jam, torn loose and tucked into his mouth with
gestures like a squirrel's. He washed the current mouthful down with a gulp of
ale and licked his lips. "A water spirit, I gathered. He claims he has the
Dragon's dispensation to usurp Kelpie, if he can."

"And he's allied with Jane."

"So it would appear," Kit
answered, with a nod to Don for confirmation.

"Dragon?" Don said. He turned a
knife over in his hands, ignoring both the butter and the bread it was meant
for. "The Times Square Dragon?"

"The same," Matthew said.
"They're all one beast."

"Except Bunyip calls her Rainbow
Snake," Kit said. He glanced around; the men's eyes were on him. Lily
studied her hands, and Morgan was smiling her slight, unkind smile.

Don sat back hard enough that his bulk
rocked the bench. "Aida-Wedo," he said. "Rainbow Snake?"
"I don't know her," Kit admitted. "Is that her name?"

Don set the knife aside. "My mother
follows Obeah, and she's the loa my mother serves. Aida-Wedo, which is one of
the names of Erzuli.
She's
your Dragon?"

This time, Matthew happened to be looking
at Don when he said the name, and saw the wavering awareness like the flicker
of a snake's sensing tongue. "Apparently."

"That's not right," Don said.
"The Dragon's a monster. Aida-Wedo is not."

Morgan smiled. "You misapprehend
dragons. Mist is not a monster. Mist is
Mist,
and—not unlike the Devil,
or the witch Morgan le Fey— everything about her that you can imagine is true,
or has been, or will be. The Wyrm is the mother of us all. She gnaws at our
hearts and at the roots of the world and at her own black tail. She guards the
treasures of the unknown heart, and you must win past her if you would be a
hero, and she is the death of heroes and cowards both, in the end, aye, and
poets and pretty maidens too—and out of her they are reborn."

She paused and sipped her wine before
continuing. "Rainbow Snake is no more nor less true than Fafnir in his
lair. Part of becoming a Mage—or a witch—lies in that understanding, to hold
the contradictions at heart all at once."

"And her servant is talking to Jane?
What about the Merlin? Isn't she on
your
side?" Donall turned away
from Morgan, seeking Matthew's gaze. But Matthew's eyes were dropped behind a
blunt wedge of hair released from its ponytail, elbow on the table and his
forehead resting on the edge of his hand.

"She's on all the sides," Morgan
said. "That's the bitch about dealing with gods."

"And then there's Christian to deal
with," Kit said. "Whatever he wants. Which could be just causing trouble,
or he could be using the Prometheans to keep us off-balance and us them, in
service to some larger intrigue."

Lily looked down, silent.

"I was right," Matthew said.
"I need to go talk to Jane. Before the duel." He looked up at Kit,
starkly, and just as quickly dropped his eyes again.