Emerald City Dreamer (58 page)

"
Yes, that is what I would say, isn't it? You'll just have to trust me. There's no time for anything else." Then she took her seat, her clothes dripping, adding water to the little puddles around her feet.

Gretel frowned.

"
I hurt someone, Gret," Sandy said, "and as I was bound, I..." Her eyes flicked down to Jina. Sandy brought her hand to her chest and rubbed, as if she had her own tender scar.

"
You got help," Jina said.

"
It's not all gone." Sandy glanced at Phaesyle. "I feel better, but... there's more to do."

"
There are moments like that," Jina said, her teeth chattering. "When you're ready to grow, there's a rush, a breakthrough, like magic. The rest of the time is filled with hard work thinking, talking, reading, writing, and living-"

"
And meditating, too I suppose," Sandy replied. "And mushy, wishy-washy hippy stuff." Her voice held no malice. Only acceptance.

Gayle said, "I don't expect Phaesyle is planning to clean up this mess, so I have a lot of work ahead of me tonight. Can we finish this up?"

"
Jett," Sandy began. "I have wanted to kill you since I first knew you existed. I still don't know if I can trust you... I've never given you reason to trust me. If I swear this geas, will you forgive me, Hollis, and Gretel for everything we've done?"

Jett squeezed Jina's hand. "As distasteful as it is, that has always been part of the bargain."

"
And can there be a time limit? So we both have an out?"

"
If you agree to accept my guidance, for a year and a day, I offer you my assistance and knowledge. After that time, you may choose to resume your reckless fumbling, all consequences your own. At least you will have learned a few things by then."

"
Fair," Sandy said. "Jina, I will accept your wording of the geas."

"
Can I get something to write on?" Jina asked.

Gayle brought Jina a notebook and a warm cup of tea from the backroom. Jina could barely hold the pen, but the tea helped. She drank two cups in quick succession before starting. It would buy her the time she needed.

During the five minutes while Jina scribbled, the rainwater dried, leaving even the crumbled leaves dry and crunchy, and leaving Jina blessedly warmer. Phaesyle leaned against the goddess-head of the fountain, absently sucking on a leaf stem. The water level in the pool rose until it was high enough for her to run her fingers over the surface once again.

Gayle gave Phaesyle a grateful look. Phaesyle shrugged as it she didn't have anything to do with either the rain or the cleanup.

Sandy made a few technical edits to the wording of her geas, and Jett wanted her geas to be more poetic. After that, Sandy rushed through the swearing with little pomp or ceremony.

"
In all my premeditated dealings with fae of every kind," Sandy intoned, "I will seek approval from Jett Brightgrove, Daughter of Flidais, and should she not grant it, I am bound to refrain. I so bind this geas for a year and a day."

Then Jett recited her lines. "Sandy Windham, and those of her Order acting under her command, are protected from direct or indirect harm resulting from my actions, even actions of actions like ripples on a pond, enacted by myself and any member of my brugh. I lift the blight and return what she has lost, threefold. I so bind this geas for a year and a day." She had added the word "threefold" on the fly. It wasn't written on her paper.

Jett left Jina's side and pressed something into Sandy's hand. It was a small book, almost the size of a tarot deck and half as thick, bound in tattered blue leather. It bore no title.

"
This is my journal," Jett said. "Never have I seen fiagai show remorse or reasonable action, even in the face of terrors like those I have inflicted upon you. You and Jina have both shown me otherwise. I want you to know my story."

"
Th... Thank you," Sandy whispered.

"
It is customary, when receiving a gift," Jett said, "to give another of equal value."

"
Like what? I don't have anyth--"

Jina looked up into Sandy's eyes. "Maybe you should write your story."

Jett nodded. "Stories are powerful things."

Sandy looked down at the book in her hands. "Maybe I'll do that. Yes, maybe I will."

"
This book will disappear from your possession and return to mine in a year and a day. Do not waste it."

Jett helped Jina to her feet. She'd gotten used to the pain, though the imbalance between the heat of her wound and the cold in rest of her body was so stark, it threw off her equilibrium.

"
Get Jina home and into that potato bath," Sandy said.

"
Avenge Ramon," Jett said.

"
And save Trey before that freak does anything terrible," Jina said. "His address is... Well I guess you know."

"
The graffiti is an elf door," Jett explained. "Simply peel it back like a sticker. Sometimes knocking three times makes it easier."

There was a knock at the door. It thudded dead against the glass; still the force of it rattled the bells that hung down.

Gayle approached cautiously, and motioned with her thumb. "Does anyone know this troll?"

"
Let him in," Jina said.

Orven had to duck to get through the human-sized door, and his arms threatened to knock over objects on the nearby shelves with every motion he made.

"
Sandy, meet Ezra," Jina said. "I mean, Orven."

Orven paid his killer no mind. "Pogswoth is not at home," he announced. "I went there to kill him, but he was gone."

"
He was here," Jina said.

"
I found a dreamer in his dwelling," Orven said. "Sealed up in the bricks. It is just as simple to tear stones down as it is to build them up."

"
He's free?" Jina asked eagerly. "Trey?"

"
He is safe in Noregr."

"
You took him to
Norway
?"

"
The korrigan will never think to look for him there..."

"
Now is the best time to catch him," Sandy said, picking up Jina's sword. "While he's injured. I'll have Hollis pick us up here in the van with all our equipment. Jina, I swore I'd find a way to get rid of your curse. You will see the sun again."

Sandy grabbed Gretel and headed for the door. Phaesyle landed on a shelf by the entryway, on eye-level with Sandy. "We're not done, you and I," she said. "We will speak more, later."

"
We will," Sandy said. The door jingled behind her.

Jina's teeth chattered.

"
Jina," Orven said.

"
I'll be fine," Jina said. "Go. Bring back Trey. He doesn't belong in Norway."

"
I will," Orven said. "First, I must make one stop. I ask but one thing of you. May I have your cellphone?"

"
For keeps?" Jina asked, removing it from her pocket.

Orven nodded.

"
Why?"

"
It's for someone I once knew. Her name is Esther, and she would very much like to call her family and tell them she's okay."

Jina let the phone fall into Orven's massive hands, and leaned against Jett as she hobbled out the door.

THE BUILDING WAS EASY to find, red, with graffiti and splotches of gray and white where graffiti had been painted over. It was hard to guess what it had once been: A small warehouse, a machine shop, light manufacturing. As they drove by, Sandy spotted the graffiti that marked the elf door.

Sandy sorted through the supplies while Hollis struggled to find parking on Capitol Hill on a Friday night.

This was it. Sandy was finally getting justice against a faerie, a murderer, someone she could kill in good conscience and in relative safety. She tried to feel some joy in it; she could find none.

She reminded herself that this korrigan had stalked Jina and tried to abduct her, had faestricken her, had killed at least two people, and reneged on a deal. These felt like good justifications, and only that.

Her thirst for revenge might return one day, but on this day, when she'd been so humbled and worn down, this was just a job, a duty, a distasteful and unnecessary evil.

With the van parked, Hollis opened the back door and Sandy passed out the weapons. Hollis's shirt read,
Don't Panic
, and Sandy tried to take that advice while she handed him a pistol and a sword, and took the shotguns for Gretel and herself. She also took Jina's sword and strapped it in a spare scabbard at her waist. Jina always liked the look of the thin katana. Sandy wished she were here to use it.

It was just the three of them. Sandy led the way up the street, past parked cars, dumpsters, and a line waiting to get in at Neumo's. The angle-parked cars along the side of the red building provided good shelter from prying eyes. Hollis pointed at a bumper sticker:
Keep Seattle Weird
. They were certainly trying their best. No one gave them a second glance.

Sandy paused before the elf door. After all she'd been through, and with the last tendrils of Tir Nan Og still clinging to her, Sandy found it easy to think of the squiggle of paint as a giant sticker that would peel back. Behind it stood a wooden door with no lock. It creaked on its hinges as she pushed it forward.

The inside was an empty black maw.

Sandy whirled the flashlight around and took the lead. Gretel picked up her pack and followed her in, with Hollis trailing behind, the sword aloft in his hand.

A few moths flapped past them, fleeing like pixies out of a sithein. A short hallway led to a cramped hovel full of junk. The air smelled strongly of boiled cat food. The only thing of value was a pile of books by authors like Voltaire, Kierkegaard, Marx, Freud, and Nietzsche. John Lennon was playing on a record player, the same line stuck on repeat:
Imagine... Imagine... Imagine...

The wall featured a fresh hole, with a pile of broken bricks next to a smashed shopping cart. In the dark hollow, she thought she saw what looked like bones, and the shriveled body of a child.

A pile of rags moved in the corner. Sandy pointed her shotgun at it.

"
Korrigan hear me, Hear me true, You're fixed in place, Held like glue." She rattled off the rooting spell with confidence and power.

The rags slid off. Pogswoth sat up but moved no further. He had a dirty shirt pressed against the dent in his head.

"
Well go on, finish me off," he said. "End my miserable little life. Maybe next go-round I'll be born rich. Or stay unborn and find my own island in Tir Nan Og someplace."

Gretel and Hollis had her covered. Sandy put the shotgun down against the wall and slid the katana out of its scabbard. She poked at him in the chest. "First you make everything normal for Jina again. No more day is night, warm is cold for her. Make it all okay."

"
Nothing will make anything okay," the korrigan said. "We don't always get what we want. So kill me already."

"
Do it," Hollis growled. "He's asking for it."

"
Not yet. I promised Jina."

"
Promises are meant to be broken," Pogswoth said. "Honor is dead, if it could ever have been considered alive, and the virtues of chivalry were just a lie told to keep the lowborn low."

Hollis threw his gun down and stuck the point of his blade against Pogswoth's face.

"
I will make him do it," Hollis said.

"
That's it," Pogswoth said. "Cut me to bits before you kill me. It's nothing I've never suffered before."

Hollis flicked his wrist a little, and blood welled up on Pogswoth's cheek. The ease and skill with which he did it sickened her.

The korrigan groaned in pain. "I once spent an eternity being punished at the hands of my sworn liege lord. All for imagined slights."

Hollis added a new stripe beneath it. Sandy tried to take some kind of pleasure in it, though she could only imagine the umbrella in her own mind, made to shelter her, and instead ceaselessly cutting her on its cruel edges.

Pogswoth merely grunted at the second wound. Only a small patch above his right eyebrow was free of blood. "At least at the end of this, I'll be dead," he snarled. "You'll go on to suffer for a lifetime, wracked by your own mind."