Death's Mistress

Page 5

Mircea had been a little different, because he was cursed, not made. He’d failed to realize that the old Gypsy woman who’d been ranting at him had been the real deal for a week, until some nobles tried to kill him and he didn’t die. In the meantime, he’d gone about his usual playboy ways, resulting in a bouncing baby abomination nine months later.
I could count on two hands the number of dhampirs I knew who were currently living, and I wouldn’t even need all the fingers. But as far as I knew, there were no other Duergar-Brownie mixes at all. Stinky was in a class by himself, and I knew from personal experience where that left him.
It wasn’t anywhere good.
Claire patted my shoulder. “Do you at least have a babysitter?”
I nodded to the small, huddled figure in the corner, who was trying to hide behind the rocking chair. “It’s okay, Gessa. You can go.”
Two tiny brown eyes peered at me myopically for a moment from under a fall of dark brown curls. Then their owner jumped to her full height of three foot two and scurried out the door. She never needed to be told twice.
“Olga was doing it,” I said, referring to the very competent secretary I’d recently acquired. “But she’s trying to start her business up again, and she can’t stay all night. And the freeloaders downstairs scatter to the four winds every time I so much as look at—”
“What freeloaders?”
Oops. “Uh, well, when they heard she’d moved out here, some of Olga’s old employees decided to come, too. And since they’re also relatives, she didn’t feel like she could say no….”
“Are you trying to tell me that there’s a colony of trolls living in my basement?”
“I probably should have worked up to it more.”
“At least that explains the smell.”
“That’s Stinky,” I admitted. “He believes in living up to his name.”
“Well, maybe you should get him a better one!”
“I tried. There are no colonies of Brownies around here, but I located some Duergars who live over in Queens. But they just told me they thought he was already well named!”
“He’s a half-breed,” she said sadly, her fingers carding through his hair. “They probably didn’t like him.”
“They did tell me that their people have to earn their names. They just use a nickname before then.”
“Earn them how?”
“They didn’t say. But the elders have to award them, apparently, and you can guess what the odds are of that in his case. When he gets older, I’ll let him decide what he wants to be called.” I pushed up the window, letting in the night breeze. “And it’s not so bad once you get—”
I broke off abruptly. For the second time that night, I saw something that had me questioning my sanity. More than usual, I mean.
The trees on the lot are mostly original, and the granddaddy of them all grew outside that window: a massive, old cottonwood that had to have been more than a sapling when the house was built. Its tear-shaped leaves were dancing as the wind swept along the side of the house, causing a rustling, shifting kaleidoscope of dark green, silver and deep black. And for a moment, in the contrast of light and shadow, I thought I saw…
“Dory—” Claire touched my shoulder and I flinched. She frowned. “What is it?”
“Do you see… anything… in the tree?” I asked, trying to keep my voice light.
She peered around. “What? You mean the squirrel’s nest?”
I swallowed. “I think I need a drink.”
“Well, that’s what I’ve been saying.” She sighed. “Is there no alcohol in this house?”
“I may be able to come up with something.”
“Wonderful. Let’s sit on the porch, though. I could use some air.”
Claire went to her old room to find some clothes, and I went to the kitchen for a couple of glasses from the drying rack. I was just pulling up the trapdoor in the hall, where I keep the good stuff, when she clattered downstairs. She was wearing a green wraparound shirt that matched her eyes and old jeans, and she had a well-behaved baby on each hip.
“I don’t know how long we’ll be able to stay outside. It looks like a storm’s blowing up,” she told me, before catching my expression. “What?”
“You managed to get Stinky into clothes?” The fuzzy armful on her left hip was wearing a pair of bright blue running shorts, like it was no big deal. The last time I’d gotten him dressed, I’d practically had to have Olga sit on him.
“He did it himself.”
I shot him the evil eye. Okay, now I knew he was trying to make me look bad.
I grabbed a couple of bottles from the small space, shut the door and carefully replaced the carpet runner. “I didn’t know we had a smugglers’ hole,” Claire said, following me down the hall.
“There are hidden compartments all over the place. I think your uncle used them for storage.”
Claire’s late uncle Pip had been a bootlegger, and a highly successful one, at that. He’d purchased the place when the captain died and quickly realized he’d hit the jackpot. Two ley lines—the rivers of power generated when worlds collide on a metaphysical level—crossed directly underneath the foundation. The result was a rare commodity known as a ley-line sink, which generated enormous magical power.
It was the equivalent of free electricity for life. Only instead of lamps and refrigerators, he’d used it to power wards and portals, including a highly illegal portal to Faerie. It allowed him to bypass the heavily regulated—and heavily taxed—interworld trade system. And not any old trade either. He’d gone straight for the gold and started trafficking in the volatile substance known as fey wine.
The magical community’s police force didn’t catch on because he didn’t use any of the official portals. The fey didn’t pay him much attention because he wasn’t purchasing the wine directly, just the ingredients, and probably from many different sources. Once he had them in hand, he’d set up a still in the basement and started making magic.
“But why do you need it?” Claire asked. “There’s plenty of cabinet space.”
I glanced at her over my shoulder. “Have you ever seen trolls drink?”
She laughed, and suddenly she looked like Claire—the real one, not this pursed-lipped stranger. “They don’t show up too often at court!”
“Well, if they ever do, hide the liquor.” I bumped the back door open with a hip and stepped out into the sound of crickets and the smell of impending rain.
I paused to scan the yard, because I am not prone to hallucinations. But the only thing out of the ordinary was the weather. In the square of sky visible above the trees that bordered the right side and back of the yard, clouds hung low and ominous, seeming to glow from the inside. And above the neighbor’s privacy fence on the left, near the horizon, a sheet of gray rain wavered in the wind like a billowing curtain.
“What is it?” Claire was peering into the darkness with me. Red curls whipped around her face, blowing across the lenses of the pair of glasses she’d dug up somewhere.
“You still need those things even though…” I made a gesture that encompassed the whole thing in the hall.
She shifted, looking slightly uncomfortable. “Yes. In this form, anyway. My other… Well, it actually sees better at night.”
I usually did, too, but it wasn’t helping right now. I leaned through the porch railing to look up into the branches of the massive cottonwood. Some of them overhung the porch, but all I saw were rustling leaves. I concentrated on the more sensitive peripheral vision, paying attention to any change in the light, any shifting forms. But the result was the same: nothing.
“What are you looking for?” Claire asked again, a little more forcefully.
“I’m not sure yet.”
“We can go back inside if you think there’s a problem.”
“The wards protect the porch as well as the house. It’s no safer inside.”
“It’s no safer anywhere,” she said bitterly.
“Careful. You’re starting to sound like me.” I paused, listening, but my ears failed me, too. I could hear the wind snapping the tarp we’d put over a hole in the roof, the squeak of the weather vane and the creak of the porch swing’s chains. But nothing else.
Claire hugged her arms around herself. “You scare me sometimes.”
“This from the woman who just handed me my ass in there.”
“I didn’t mean I’m afraid of you,” she said impatiently. “I’m afraid for you. You look like you’re planning to take on an army all by yourself.”
“Are you expecting one?”
“Not yet,” she muttered.
“Well, that’s something.” I decided to let the wards do their job and concentrated on setting up the porch for civilized living.
It had been furnished more with comfort in mind than style. An old porch swing, with flaking white paint and rusty chains, sat on the left. A sagging love seat that Claire had brought with her from her old apartment, and which the house wouldn’t permit past the front door, sat on the right. And a potting bench nestled up against the back of the house, next to the door.
I put the bottles and glasses on the bench and went back for the takeout. I returned to find Claire frowning at a small blue bottle and the boys hunched over a chess set my roommates had left out. They were sprawled on their stomachs near the stairs, happily watching the tiny pieces beat the crap out of one another.
The board was Olga’s. The pieces were trolls on one side and ogres on the other, all equipped with miniature weapons—swords, axes and what appeared to be a small catapult half hidden behind some trees. The game was played on an elaborate board complete with forests, caves and waterfalls, and it bore, as far as I’d been able to tell, no relationship to human chess whatsoever. Olga maintained that I only said that because I always lost.