Death's Mistress

Claire hauled me to the top of the steps, pretending that I was doing most of the work. I didn’t need the ego validation, but the supporting arm was nice. My throat was on fire, my legs were throbbing and I was soaking wet. But nothing else had come up, so that was something.

The living room was oddly normal- looking, maybe because it still had a roof. That was more than I could say for most of the hallway. There were holes in the old wallpaper, and a miniature waterfall down what had been the stairs and three stories of destruction overhead. It was still raining, and a light drizzle filtered down to wet our hair and to splash on the already soaked floorboards. A clump of half-melted snow followed it, smacking onto the ground at my feet.

I knelt and felt around until my fingers hit the indentation for the trapdoor. It was coated in a thin rime of ice, like the myriad pools that had collected in depressions here and there. But the heel of my hand broke through and the heavy piece of wood came free with a crack.

I pushed it up, sending a miniature flood against the wall, and looked inside. And then had to shy back when a hairy little head popped out. Huge gray eyes blinked blearily at me, before the face cracked into a lopsided grin.

“The smugglers’ hole!” Claire knelt and snatched Aiden out of the depths of the small space, hugging him fiercely. He was still clutching a chess piece, which fell to the floor and scampered away down the hall as fast as its tiny legs could carry it.

“It seemed a good guess. They’d just seen it.”

Claire ignored her son’s protests over how hard she was squeezing. From the look of things, it might take amputation to get him away from her. “I can’t believe they were in there through all that!”

“I wouldn’t worry too much about their recall,” I said cynically, watching Stinky trying to crawl out of the hole.

Usually, he hopped around, over and up the furniture like a miniature acrobat, but not today. One long-toed foot made it over the edge and stuck there. He stared at it in some surprise, as if unsure what this strange new thing might be. Then the toes wiggled, and he broke down in helpless giggles, falling back against the rows of bottles he hadn’t yet drained.

“I don’t think they’re feeling any pain,” I told Claire.

Her eyes roamed over the devastation before meeting mine. “For now.”

“Now’s good.”

She stared at me a moment and then nodded, still clutching her struggling son. He scrunched up his face, looking vaguely like Stinky for a moment, but not out of fear. He wanted to chase the escapee and didn’t understand what all the fuss was about.

I left the kids with Claire, and went to assess the situation.

As I’d suspected, the house was pretty much unlivable, but the wards had held, including the glamourie that hid the destruction from casual passersby. From the street, everything looked perfectly normal—or at least no more dilapidated than usual. Except for the front yard, which was already becoming a swamp as the house started to expel some of the four feet of snow it had collected.

I watched the overflow tumble into the water-slick street and drain down already busy gutters for a moment, pondering alternatives. But there really weren’t any. The fey didn’t seem to find human wards all that impressive, and I strongly suspected that the only reason they hadn’t been able to get in was the recent upgrades Olga had done.

The house now boasted a combination of human and fey protection that would be hard to top anywhere. It might be a trash heap, but it was a damn well-guarded trash heap. We were going to have to make the best out of it, like it or not.

I went back inside. The living room and the kitchen were the only areas on the ground floor that could be considered livable. Claire was in the former, but not bedding the kids down as I’d expected.

She must have been upstairs, because she’d changed into dry clothes, a black T-shirt and jeans, and she had a small suitcase at her side. She was struggling to get Aiden into a rain poncho when I came in the door. But he wasn’t having it, fat little hands batting it away as she tried to push it down over his curls.

“What are you doing?”

She looked up, guilt and resolution in about equal measures on her face. “Getting out of here before I get you killed.”

“And get yourself killed instead?” I asked, grabbing the suitcase.

She grabbed it back. “I’m hard to kill!”

“So am I!”

She shook her head. “You didn’t see yourself down there. You didn’t—I won’t be responsible for that!”

“I’m a big girl, Claire. I’m responsible for myself.”

I don’t think she even heard me. “This whole thing… None of this was meant to happen,” she told me wildly.

“I’d pla

“Life rarely cares about our plans,” I told her cynically. In fact, it had always seemed to delight in screwing up mine.

“Life can suck it!” She started for the door, dragging Aiden after her, still caught in his plastic prison.

I got my back against the door, which was stupid. Claire could move me—along with what remained of the wall—if she felt like it. But she’d seemed kind of upset at the thought of me dying, so I was trusting her not to squash me like a bug.

“So what’s the plan now? Run off into a night filled with known enemies?”

Claire gave me a frantic, frustrated look, and pushed bushy red hair out of her face. All the moisture in the air had turned it back into a huge fuzz ball. “I’m not stupid, Dory. They expended a lot of power on that storm, and more making those damned things. They’re exhausted. It’s why I have to leave now.”

She started to push past, but I didn’t budge. “They seemed to be doing fine until a few minutes ago. And if those things re-form and you’re gone, it’ll leave the rest of us defenseless.”

Claire shot me a look that said she knew exactly what I was doing, and it wasn’t going to work. “They can’t re-form, at least not right away. Iron only disrupts the field, costs them time while they rebuild it. I didn’t do that. I drained away the power they need to make the creatures to begin with.”

“So once it’s gone, it’s gone?”

She nodded. “At least until they rest up. And considering how much energy creating that storm must have used, that will take a while.”

“Assumingsubrand used everyone in the attack, which we don’t know,” I pointed out. “He could have left a few of his people out, hoping you’d panic—”

“I’m not panicking!”

“—and run, making their job easy.”

“To do that, he’d have had to assume that his initial assault would fail,” she said impatiently. “Andsubrand is far too arrogant for that.”

I couldn’t really argue that one, so I changed tactics. “So you run. Then what?”

“I have a lot of contacts in the auction business,” she told me, her color high. “If the rune is up for sale, someone has to know about it. I have to find out who has it before it ends up in a private collection somewhere and disappears.”

“Fair enough. But you can’t do that with the heir to the throne of Faerie on your hip.”

“The fey don’t know this world—”

“But plenty of other people do! And nothing is easier than hiring a bunch of mercenaries.” I should know; I was one.

She blinked, as if that had never even occurred to her. “I don’t think… I don’t think they’d do that. The fey handle their own problems.” But she didn’t look sure.

I pressed my advantage. “Okay, setting that aside, do you know what Aiden would be worth in ransom?”

“As soon as the shops open tomorrow, I’ll dress him like a human child. No one needs to know—”

I stopped her with a hand on her arm. “Look.”

Aiden had freed himself from the grip of the poncho and curled into a sleeping ball on the rug. Stinky was resting his head on the princely bottom, staring at him with liquid eyes that reflected a soft golden glow. It spilled over the muted colors of the old Persian and highlighted the scuffed floorboards like lantern light. It wasn’t.