Emerald City Dreamer (36 page)

"
No kidding. Huh." He sat down in a gap between Tom and Kimberly. He pursed his lips and looked from face to face.

"
There's absolutely no need to be afraid, Ramon. We do our best to make this a safe space for sharing. You can trust us."
God, I hope he tells me what the hell is going on. Maybe he just saved me from making a terrible mistake...

"
Yes," Myrtle said. "They're so warm and welcoming here. Never any judgments. I have no safer confidant. Except maybe my cat, Filbert."

Ramon nodded.

"
Let's get started," Jina said. "My name is... Lynne." She saw Ramon's raised eyebrows and felt like a liar and a hypocrite. She broke the script a little bit, hoping to explain her sudden name change. "It's important everyone here feels safe and
anonymous
. We still encourage people to start with their first name, just so we know what to call you. Your personal comfort and safety is the highest goal." She wanted to add, "If you know what I mean," but she didn't. She couldn't read Ramon's expression.

Gretel glanced at her sideways; Jina ignored her. She couldn't comprehend how to explain this to Gretel. She was barely sure what was going on herself.

Jina repeated the rules as she had the previous meeting and then opened the floor for sharing.

Kimberly started out with some yarn about how her Hearth Gnome had been feeling sad until the sunshine today raised his spirits and his health. Jina cut her off after 10 minutes. Kimberly started to protest the time limit, since there weren't as many people today. Jina responded, "Rules are rules."

Tom began with a tale of a transcendent experience he'd had the weekend before while leading a drum circle, which Jina could sort of relate to, though his conclusion that it had something to do with aliens baffled her.

Poor Ramon. He had to know about Jett. She had to have told him, or he had to have seen something. She remembered all the various stories she'd heard in Second Circle, most of them horrific. Had she abducted him? Killed someone he knew? Enslaved him?

Yet he seemed happy enough. Jina's mind wandered, searching for clues, answers. Maybe he was more like Trey. Maybe something minor bothered him. Maybe Jett was always making his keys disappear, like Myrtle's faeries.

"
Hi, my name is Mildred. Yesterday, I set out the milk for the faeries, but Filbert was outside. He drank their milk. And... I haven't seen him since." Her voice cracked, and, as was her way, Mildred left it at that. She folded her papery hands together and sat in silence, as if she would broker no further questions.

Jina's heart went out to her. Even if the fae hadn't stolen her cat, even if he was simply lost, well. That certainly had to be traumatic. Myrtle should talk more about it. There was no way to force her.

Ramon stirred to share, and Jina's heart skipped a beat.

"
Hi. You know my name,
Lynne
." He looked up and locked eyes with her, the way Jett had looked into Scarf's eyes. His voice sounded both hostile and hurt at the same time. "Someone I love has been
betrayed
. By someone who
hunts
her in her own home."

Then he stood up and walked out, slamming the door behind him.

Jina wanted to call to him, or chase after him, but Gretel sat beside her, squinting her eyes in accusation...

She hesitated. She felt sick and dizzy. His tone was clear. He wasn't here for help. Somehow he knew about them. Somehow Jett - ever so protective of those she loved - had learned of the Ordo. Ramon came to spy and found Jina in their company. Had found her
in charge
.

There were few ways Jett could interpret this, all of them very bad. And untrue.

Jina grit her teeth in frustration and fear.

Everyone else stared at the closed door in confusion and shock. An uncomfortable silence spread over the room.

Cameron broke it. "Hi, my name is Cameron. Uh, I know no crosstalk, but that was weird. So I've got an idea. Let's end the meeting early. It's nice outside, and it would be fun to head out of town, or go to a park or something."

Kimberly opened her mouth; Tom interrupted. "I second that motion."

"
Motion carries," Jina managed to say. Then she slowly gathered up her notebook and pen as everyone left the room. Everyone, that is, except Gretel.

"
What the hell was that all about?"

"
I'm not sure, Gret," Jina partially lied, the implications of explaining what she did know to Gretel outside the grasp of her mind; she was too busy trying to figure out how this had happened in the first place.

That goth faerie who came to the last meeting - maybe she knew Jett. Then how did she know this was a front group for faerie hunters? How did she know it was anything more than a bunch of whiners?

"
You know that guy," Gretel persisted.

"
Yeah, I've met him in my art circles."

"
What did he mean, about hunting?"

Jina felt sicker by the minute. She didn't have time to deal with Gretel's questions. Not yet. She needed to think.

"
He said hunt?" Jina said. "I thought he said
haunt
. Maybe he was on crack."

"
I do not need to be a psychic to know you are lying, Jina. Are you in trouble?"

"
No." Jina took a deep breath and tried to relax. "Listen, everything is fine. You know how we attract the crazies. I hardly know him. Come on, let's... go home and work on catching Ezra."

Her stomach would not stop churning. She didn't know which was scarier, that she might have just offended a faerie, or that she could lose Jett's love and acceptance.

Once she got a moment to herself, she texted Jett:
Don't make any assumptions. Please give me a chance to explain. I love you.

Somehow she had a feeling it wasn't going to make any difference.

JETT SAT ON THE FRONT PORCH soaking up the sun's rays on this rare sunny Friday afternoon, sipping lemonade, and inhaling deeply the crisp, cool smell of Pacific Northwest air.

Her soul called out to Jina.
Come to me, little flower
, she called, careful not to infuse it with glamour. She was not a siren, and she would not commit olc-spreagadh. Yet her wish still floated across the dream: that Jina would awaken in Jett's bed on many more future mornings.

Jett would have to tell her soon. Dreamers were too sensitive to Tir Nan Og. If Jina sensed something already, denials would not work for long.

All humans struggled against knowing what was there. They used every defense against the dream - fear, logic, dismissal, always clutching to cherished reality. They clung to every dream-terminating cliche - I'm crazy. I'm thinking like a child. It's just pretend.

But dreamers... some part of them wanted to believe. She would bring them to the fringes of her realm, and they would begin to open up like blooming dandelions. Then she would show them, and they could no longer deny it. She would take them into her arms and savor the torrents of aisling that spilled over from their realization of so many new possibilities.

A sense of dread crept over her and she thought of Pogswoth. He would be a problem. If he got to Jina first...

What did he mean, that Jina was fair game? He'd seemed so sure of himself, even though Cupid's Arrow could not be thwarted by someone of his stature.

He would not get her first. Jett would have Jina living here within a quarter-turn of the moon. That was certain. With Jina in her life, whatever was about to go wrong could only be beads of rain gathered on the underside of a flowering stem.

Her phone buzzed. A text from Jina brought a smile to her lips. Speaking of flowering stems.

The message confused her.
Don't make any assumptions. Please give me a chance to explain. I love you.

She started to type a reply, when her phone buzzed again. Ramon.
Jina has betrayed us.

Her hand hovered over the keypad.

Ramon had been at that front meeting for Sandy's hate group. If he had seen her there... That didn't seem right. Jina was just a human, a dreamer,
Blathin
reborn.

She decided to be sensible and wait for Ramon to explain before jumping to dangerous conclusions. She erased the reply to Jina, and instead wandered into the house to refill her lemonade and settle in the living room to wait.

Ramon burst in about 15 minutes later.

"
She's one of them."

Jett gripped the arm of her couch.

"
We were looking for 'Lynne', right?" Ramon continued. "Lynne is Jina."

Memories flashed through Jett's mind like old portraits. The iron amulet. Reference to a secret organization. Jina's distance on their last date. Her caution when entering the brugh.

The standing-stones cascaded down, each clacking together in a long chain.

The seducer had been seduced. The fiagai had pretended at love, had slept in this brugh, this safe house, with murderous aim. Like a Cold War spy. Like an Inquisition
familiare
. At any point Jina could have plunged an iron dagger into Jett's heart and that would have been the end of her thousand-year timthreall.

And to think that Jett had protected her, had saved her from the korrigan using the very fae magic that Jina sought to destroy.

The lemonade in her hand turned from yellow to pond-green, and then bubbled over the edge of the glass with algae and scum. Jett hardly noticed.

Don't make any assumptions,
the text had said. Jett chuckled darkly as Ramon looked on in horror. These were not assumptions, they were facts.
Blathin
had been destroyed by the fiagai, and this pretender to her memory wore a shroud that could not disguise the perversion - that she
was
fiagai.

And to think of how many times she'd been tempted to follow Jina's aisling to its inevitable end, to be consumed by love. It would have destroyed her and the brugh as well. Possibly all fae in the area.

Jett submerged into the regal tranquility. She let go of the morsel of Jina's toradh she held in her heart. She rid herself of the thing in her hand, a former glass of lemonade on a formerly beautiful day.

"
Gather the others," she said in a calmly cold voice. She stood and walked down the stairs to the basement, slime oozing up from her footprints, shadows left sticking in her wake.

Ramon scrambled to pull together whoever happened to be home and then started phoning everyone else to reel them in from their various outings in the spring-lit city.

Jett sat like a stone statue at the head chair of the giant table in the basement and waited.

Fiz came down right away. As soon as she saw his feet on the stair, she ordered, "Clean this place up. Immediately."

"
Yes, milady." He scrambled around, picking up scattered pop cans and animal bones. He leaned over to Ramon and whispered, "Who hath pissed in her lemonade?"

"
You don't know the half of it," Ramon replied.

Jett sat like a statue on her throne, brooding while the room transformed into something resembling a medieval meeting hall - a clean medieval meeting hall. When Ivy came down, glanced around at the gloom, she started helping with clean-up, probably to avoid Jett's marble glare.

Soon, the household had gathered around the table. Ramon sat to her right, Fiz on her left. Next to him sat Pete, a short, stocky fellow with curly orange hair. Next to Ramon sat Ivy, and next to her, Kenny, who popped a Smartie into her mouth, then wasted no time in opening a sticker-coated netbook and began furiously typing with tattoo-covered fingers.

"
Kenny, no games tonight."

"
Yep, srs bsns, Lady Jett, just takin' notes." She smacked her bubblegum and tugged at the earrings pierced through the tip of her pointy ears that stuck out the side of her head in size "extra-long". She continued typing and ate another Smartie, somehow all at once.

"'
bout time we had some gaddam excitement 'round here," Pete muttered.